Dura Lex, Sed Lex
by Pascal in Quebec
Summary: The Law may be hard, but it is still and forever The Law. Some people live by this adage. Some people do their best to destroy this reality and the world it supports. Lucas lived and breathed the Law as it was his only source of comfort and stability in life. Pity those fools that tried to make him abandon the Law or bypass it for their own gains. He would have no mercy on them.
1. OH HEY, YE MEN OF STOUT HEARTS!

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

 **SeaQuest**

This story takes place in season 1, just after the SeaQuest was violently boarded and taken over by Colonel Shraeder and his mercenaries. I will be modifying several elements of that episode to fit with the fic, notably that there were more mercs in the transport, they were more violent and Lucas had been significantly more reactive and aggressive when helping to safeguard the ship and crew. The modifications to the canon of many episodes will be major and showed as flashbacks or during discussion between crew members.

 **IMPORTANT:** for the purpose of keeping this story logical and relevant, the episode "Nothing but the truth" where Shraeder invades the ship is set as #2 in the season instead of playing at #14 as original. I then follow it immediately by the "Treasures of the Tonga Trench" as #3 instead of playing #5 in the season since I need the inspection to happen quicker to set up stuff quickly and again, logically in time and space. The episode "Bad water" where Lucas, Ford, Krieg and Westphalen are adrift in a liferaft is moved to #4 and then the rest would play out as in the original season 1.

This story is Alternate Universe, most characters are OOC and there are several crossovers with the maritime-inspired series NCIS and JAG who are the most relevant to the situations facing Lucas and the crew of the SeaQuest. The cast of Bones makes an appearance as I will borrow Sweets and Booth for a spin. There is a lot of CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Canadian Mounties and Coast Guard and multivaried organisations mentioned along the way. As such, given so many crossovers of equal proportions, I am again placing this in the general SeaQuest section of the fandom since it would not fit in a single sub-genre. My thanks for your tolerance of the situation.

Unlike my other story, " _Justice for Lucas_ ", this has absolutely no psionics, magicks or time engines involved even if such things were part & parcel of the SeaQuest canon in all three seasons.

PS; I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.

 **WARNING** ; the language level of this one is not too particularly trashy when we consider a story based on boats and sailors. However, as I always warn people who read my work: this language was pretty much normal in the school yard 30 years ago when I was a teenager. So, how can you have such a thin skin and be part of the same culture on the same continent if this is really that offensive to you? Where did you spend the last few decades, if you can't take a few hard words from the mouths of kids when these words have been around since before World War I?

 **SPECIAL:** For those who read my other stories, this will be a departure since I am trying my hand at a "hopeful" tone of storyline where the people around Lucas actually love, like and support him. Mostly.

PS; It starts with a few doosies...:)

 **DURA LEX, SED LEX**

 **The Law may be hard, but it is The Law**

 **Chapter 1; OH HEY, YE MEN OF STOUT HEARTS!**

 **Morning mental meanderings**

 _(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)_

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 6:00am**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship, captain's quarters**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Nathan Hale Bridger, captain extraordinaire and much lauded scientist groaned a bit as he woke up from restless slumber to his alarm blaring its dulcet tones (Not!) in his ears at Gawd-awful in the morning. Every year that passed by robbed him of a little more vitality, flexibility and facility to find restful sleep. Gone were the days when he could pull all nighters with just coffee and good ideas to drive him onwards.

The 62 year old man, slammed an unforgiving, almost bellicose hand down on the offensive contraption by his bedside, finally obtaining blessed silence. At least, his ears were no longer ringing, that was a plus. Now, if he could walk to his shower without his back acting up, he would be golden for the day. He truly hoped he didn't get a migraine like yesterday as they were all still reeling from the events, damages and injuries left in the wake of the boat invasion and following hostage crisis.

He might dodge the headache, but he could bet both his legs that the guilt would find him again, just as it had yesterday evening as he lay down to try and find the elusive rest his mind craved but wasn't ready to accept. They came too close to losing too many people. They, he, had almost lost Lucas...

The experienced mariner carefully folded, slowly moved and then sat on the side of his bunk wearing only the ratty old sweatpants that he favored for sleep. He grabbed in the dark around his nightstand until he found and managed to put his glasses on his face without poking out an eye. This accomplished, he could finally spy the mop of long unruly blond hair that was the only visible part of the cabin's other occupant. Fast asleep, bunkered like an albino mole under three layers of blankets right up to his forehead, Lucas was sprawled out on the couch, on his right side with his back against the backrest, feet towards Bridger, sleeping on with the angels. Of which he most assuredly was not a member, unless horns and a spiked tail were requirements. Nathan smirked silently at his playfully errant thoughts about the gentle-souled boy... No; young man... That the whole crew was beginning to appreciate and care for so much.

He was 16 years old after all, not a child anymore. And he showed his mettle when that duplicitous bastard Shraeder came aboard two days ago. Boy did that fool and his followers get a surprise when they found a snarky, spiteful, rambunctious, porcelain-white little gremlin. He, he, he! It served them right for trying to commandeer his ship and hurt his crew as if they had the right to just waltz inside and vandalize the place. Not to mention that faking a distress signal like that was just ill mannered. No wonder; the guy had been a ground-pounder. No self-respecting sailor would do that to another.

Nathan thought back to the deathly remains of Shraeder. How they had draped formlessly over the seat and armrests of his own command chair in the middle of the bridge. He closed his eyes and saw again the clawed hammer still embedded in the back of his skull. Right where Lucas had slammed it in.

Right where the innocent, harmless, defenseless little child had hit the man in his head so hard that the hammer's claw almost came out from his right eye socket in the front and had in fact expelled the ocular globe out of his face and punted it five feet away, under the Ex-O's console. Jonathan Ford was going to remember that particular tidbit of wartime anecdote for a looong time to come...

Nathan remembered how Katherine Hitchcock had recounted the story. He remembered the bridge security video he had watched with the ship's council as Lucas sat in his chair, ensconced between, but slightly behind, Ben Krieg and Marcus Shan, hoping nobody would notice him during the meeting. As if! Even in the safest, dullest and most uninformative weekly meeting of the council, Lucas was always seen, heard and felt to be present, usually in a positive, constructive way. It was one of the few good things about having **accidentally acknowledged** him as Chief of Mammal Engineering after Ben had concocted an ill-fated practical joke by writing up an _official_ doorplate and sticking it to the teen's compartment's door.

When Bridger had jokingly made it _official in the ship's logs_ , it had set up several weird and annoying consequences for the senior officers and civilian admins, yes, but also several very practical ones too. One of those more useful effects to date was that he was now much more aware of the boy's overbooked schedule and very heavy workload. After all, all department heads reported directly to the captain, be they military or civilian. And, since he had not looked too closely at how Ben had phrased the text of the **public announcement** of Lucas's ' _posting_ ' that went with the door plate when he signed it into the logs as per his part in the prank, Nathan had got hoisted by his own petard quite nicely.

 **Dura Lex, Sed Lex;** _The Law may be hard, but it is still and forever The Law._

Nathan and his officers should have remembered that old proverb of churches, kings and governments before they set up their supposedly inoffensive prank because they sure got burned by it in the end.

The Law does not think it's a joke when you use _official military letterhead_ and _stamps of office_ to write and then _seal_ a document. As soon as it was transcribed into the UEO's admin system by a well meaning yeoman who found the forms in his outbox on his desk but didn't know it was all part of an elaborate multi-person prank, the _Act_ became _official_. It was then automatically recognized as valid by no less than the General Accounting Office, the Judge Advocate General, the Naval Criminal Investigative Services, the Coast Guard and then the NATO Alliance wholesale. Can you say 'clusterfuck' with feeling? They would ALL now have to live with their misshapen creation or risk court martial for everyone involved, from himself all the way down to the innocent yeoman who input the sheets because he didn't take the time to glance at them and question the imminently questionable nature of the orders on the forms.

His good personal friend of some four decades, director of US Naval Intelligence, Chief of the UEO Naval Forces, admiral (3 stars) William 'Bill' Noyce, was, to say the least, quite righteously aghast at the entire series of events. He did manage to say so quite clearly, in between bouts of laughing his head off like a loon drowning in a barrel of moonshine. Stupid Academy buddies... What did he keep in touch with the guy for anyways? And it was the man's fault for Nathan getting kidnapped from his peaceful, quiet island to be dropped into this teen-angst driven crapper of a boat! He didn't ask for this!

The result of the _little snafu_ in the ship's first month of operation was that he had accidentally instituted a brand new department that had not existed before ANYWHERE in the US or UEO. That created the obligation for the ENTIRE UEO Alliance membership to write up and institute several official formularies, letterhead templates and even a stylized colored business card for Lucas. The same model of official calling card that was offered to every civilian administrator, like Doctors Westphalen and Levine, when they accepted their contracts to work aboard. At the age of 16, Lucas had made it to the top 12 of the ship's best and most in-view officials. He had a LEGAL (" _Humph! Men and their idiotic applications of stupidly made Laws!_ " Kristen _protested vehemently_ ) function, position and the right to read / work with classified reports. He now had a solid claim to sit on council and assist in the decision-making and management of the ship as a whole.

And he thrived on it. Like he was born for it. Like he was Nathan's spiritual heir finally revealed after all these years of waiting in the shadows for just the right moment to claim his heritage. The work he did with Darwin had spawned a lot of stories around the US Navy's captaincy and the higher brass were now taking account of his existence as if Lawrence was now obsolete since his son could replace him. And with a personality like they both had, who in their right mind wouldn't want to trade out the father for the much friendlier, stabler son?

Bah! " _Spiritual Heir_ " indeed! He must really be getting soft in the head if all that romantic drivel from his poor wife's fantasy novels was finally percolating inside his thick head.

But the fundamental truth was that this whole thing started as a playful way for Nathan to break the ice with the teenager to gauge his reactions to a rather questionable, emotionally straining joke. He had wanted to see for himself if the young man really was a **discipline problem** who would blow up violently for menial reasons as his father claimed and Bill Noyce parroted blindly, or if there was something behind all of it.

The reaction he got for his little misapplied psych test was still mind blowing three weeks later. The kid turned around his as-of-yet surly, standoffish, introverted attitude to become almost overnight an extroverted ball of goodness, bouncing down the corridors while sporting a megawatt smile. And lets not forget; the blaring hard rock selection, played in his room loud enough for sensor chief Ortiz to remind him periodically to pipe it down so he could actually listen outside the ship once in a while.

Nathan leaned backwards against the wall on the far side of his bunk, looking at the glowing numbers on his alarm clock. 6:04 am. Blergh! It was way too early in the morning to have such meandering thoughts. That's what eleven o'clock in the evening and a glass of brandy were for. And the images... Bridger massaged his temples, on both sides of his head in slow, circular motions. He had a crapton of stuff to process before breakfast but, honestly, was clueless as to where to begin or how. And he just knew that Kristen wouldn't help any. Her opinions about Lucas, his work-product, his access to military files, the not-so-secretive hacking into classified and illegal sites topped by his legal/political place amongst the ship's crew had become as many subjects of contention that put her at odds with almost everybody, starting with the usually friendly and genuinely amicable teenager.

Lucas had honestly, openly earned his place on the ship's council and in the hearts of the crewmen like a barnacle boring its way through the hull of a wooden sailboat. He did it with his assiduous and unrelenting work ethos to never quit a job he voluntarily took on while never promising more than he could deliver. He did it one person at a time with his stable, reliable, amiable personality that almost everybody on board appreciated and wanted to have by their side when thing got tough or weird.

Except the Chief medical officer who kept bleating like a sheep about the illegality and immorality of having a child anywhere aboard a military ship. Well, she got a nasty wake-up call when the GAO, JAG, NCIS, CG, CGIS, FBI and the much vaunted US Attorney's office all returned legal advices that matched or confirmed each other. Lucas was 16 years old before he came aboard so he had reached the minimum age that The Law states a person can apply to join the Navy. With the caveat that a minor, under age 18, must have a valid permission form signed by their legal custodial guardian and the form must be validated by a Standing naval and/or Governmental Authority like a civilian court or one of the many agencies in Washington DC. Lawrence signed the sheet with his eyes closed and Bill Noyce countersigned. End of story.

Lucas was LEGALLY on board of SeaQuest but had not gotten paid or been given an actual cabin or proper treatment as a person for the first three weeks because the Navy, meaning their proxy the ship's captain, was supposed to look over the agreement between Lawrence and Noyce and then determine the duty station appropriate for the age, mind and skills of the boy to work at. Nobody told Nathan that small detail when he took (was gang-pressed!) the job. Even the specific file about Lucas that had been in the safe of his quarters had no information about the agreement or contractual obligations that Lucas might still have outside the ship towards his family or World Power Project for his father. Everything was _fubar in the hole_ but then accidentally cleared up because of his timely, if poorly, executed farce.

Well, ha! Take that, logic! Human knee-jerk-reaction rules again!

Nathan groaned against his completely foggy thought patterns, his mind refusing to work in linear fashion so early before first light. What a bloody fucking mess they had on their hands now.

After Shraeder's inept minion Lance Bowman had almost started a catastrophe in the servers, Nathan had again committed an error in speed and inattention. The battle group stationed above the Quest during the _hull siphon trials_ had asked who was their 'CCA' in charge of cybernetics and cypher security for the classified sections of the ship's data module stack. Having been squeezed between the dead corpse of a certain uncouth lout resting on his command deck and the necessities of organizing the repairs and return of his crew aboard R-F-N, Bridger had not paid attention to a few details on the digital form that was displayed on the tablet held before him by the ensign. History repeated itself and now Lucas had two full time jobs to keep up with. And he did, the little bastard, he did indeed.

By putting Lucas's name on the form as guardian of the ship's deepest and most heavily coded secrets inside the very heart of their billion-dollar server, Nathan had accidentally told the entire US Navy fleet, along with their partners in NATO and the UEO, that he was the ' _person of authority_ ' when matters of Information Technologies or Cybernetic Security were spoken of. Hence Lucas now got to modify his business cards to add 'Chief Computer Analyst' and 'GAO agent, OpSec analyst for Classified and Cyphered Affairs' to go along the very distinguished turquoise lettering proclaiming him 'Chief of Mammal engineering' and 'Permanent Senior Member, Ship's Administrative Council'.

Kristen was not a happy doctor of human medicine, biology, biochemistry, genomics and veterinarian medicine; no she was not...

Blast! Now there's that migraine he had been avoiding... It came home to papa after all... Damn!

The worst part of the whole story was that instead of partying all night like any young sailor or bureaucrat receiving a healthy rank promotion (with pay and benefits, I'll have you know!) Lucas went head first into taking his new department by the horns, tails and tentacles to beat it into shape so he could present to the council a credible outlook for reforming the team, his team now, and what schedule they could expect him to need to get things functional up to reliable standings. It took him almost 30 hours straight of hard unrelenting work without rest and just a few five-minute toilet breaks as he ate with one hand, typing with the other or speaking to the computer's vocal processor as he went.

The report was given yesterday evening before going for a shower, his first real hot meal in two days and a clear order from Nathan that he would crash in the captain's quarters as his were still cordoned off by NCIS yellow tape as a crime scene. The widespread layer of shards of glass, plastics, metals and some wooden splinters from the two picture frames that used to overlook the bunk littered the whole place making it uninhabitable for the near future. Most of his clothing had bullet holes and fire damage from the cretin who threw a shrapnel grenade into the room before closing the door to contain both the blast and the flames.

They were lucky God loved them so much that the various gas and ammonia pipes had been purged and the electricals cut off by Lucas himself as part of his somewhat paranoid escape-the-invaders reaction. He had foreseen that anybody invading the ship would wind up at his doorstep seeking the CPU access codes as well as any way to get into the comms suite, the sensors and the nuclear stockade. The teen took measures that were exceptionally clever and _final_ in keeping those codes and passes out of hands not his own.

It changed nothing to the final result, which was a young man practically destitute of worldly belongings, wearing only the clothes on his back for the next week or so until they reached land for medical check-ups by neutral-party doctors as obliged by NCIS and JAG requirements for the investigation to proceed cleanly. After that, everybody had a mandatory shore leave of five days to recover from traumatism, shock and get some family time for those who could. Lucas had nobody to contact or live with, especially not in this small fishing town of Northern Australia. He just planned to shop for new 'stuff' in what stores they had, just enough to have a livable setup. After that, he would spend his time alone on the beach or the cheap motel room he would rent since he had precious little money to spare after just a few weeks of payed work accruing in his account.

Hence Nathan's dilemma as he let the worn out child enjoy the _Rest of the Just_ as he had so clearly earned in full. The older adult wanted to help by inviting him to share the hotel room he would rent in a mid-level building right off the portuary area of town. Since it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination a tourist town, the prices were very reasonable and he could afford a two bedroom with full bathroom suite for the price of a miserable single-bed in a cheap motel in New Cape Quest. It wasn't a hardship on his well padded wallet at his age and career, as you can see.

Try telling that to a teenager who just struck the motherload of job opportunities right in his domain of studies, right at the beginning of his career, just on the very cusp of adulthood. Add that said teenager was a fiercely private, defensive, prickly character and you would have a sea mine called ' _personal pride in his accomplishments_ ' floating off your bow.

No, this wasn't going to go well at all when he offered... And then Kristen would tetch because he hadn't imposed his will or broken the boy to his authority as she kept telling him to do. She had told him just last night that Lucas had far too much free time and freedom to do whatever he wanted for a boy his age.

She had the gall to claim quite vocally that he should be constricted to his compartment and forbidden from fraternizing with the rest of the crew until he learned to respect the authority and station of adults in his life. She further claimed that he had proven to be quite impolite, ill-mannered, ill-bred, rebellious and, to her unsubstantiated saying, even _threateningly aggressive_ towards varied members of the civilian science staff.

By 'scientific staff' she meant only herself; Nathan wasn't blind or senile yet despite his age.

There was a full-blown power struggle going on between the Chief of medicine and his CME/CCA that he just didn't think would resolve itself without somebody's career burning in tatters on the ground. While many people uneducated in the culture of the military and government might say it was Lucas who was headed for a much needed comeuppance and put-down of his teenaged rebellion, Nathan knew better.

The LETTER of the Law as well as its spirit were behind the young man. That had been put in stone as soon as the permission to embark had left Lawrence's desk for it's layover on Bill's table and then its ill-fated arrival on his own docket. The forms were _signed, sealed and struck_ , then uploaded to the UEO central administration which then sprayed it around to every member federation, then the individual member-states of the federations who then each shared with the embassies of the countries they were friendly with.

The process happened three times by now; with his presence on board as a legally contracted civilian consultant; with his posting as CME and then with his posting as CCA. Once was accident, twice was happenstance but thrice was a plan in motion. The Governing Authority didn't want to hear anything that would remove the very talented and compulsively productive _Professor_ Wolenczak out of his functions, positions, ranks and certainly not out of their employ. He was both a golden boy and a walking gold mine of tech to such extent that the US Navy / UEO Alliance explained to him in gloriously painful detail just how they would rather sack the other officers and administrators of the ship than lose Lucas to some other organization or back to a private consulting firm.

There was no turning back time, this wasn't a fantasy or sci-fi story; there was no Dumbledore with a Time Turner hidden in the closet, no matter how much crying and bitching some crew members were bound to express publicly. Despite all this, Nathan had some damned heavy arbitration to do because Lucas was still not Legally Emancipated but the UEO did not require him to have a Legal Guardian anymore since he was Chief of two departments and had been placed on the ship's council as if he had been elected alderman to a municipal council. He was deemed responsible enough for full autonomy on his own recognizance by the Law and Custom, but the situation was not pressing enough to actually produce a _Writ of Emancipation_ unless the teen or someone else went to court and asked for one.

Noyce wasn't pushing for emancipation, but nobody knew his game plan. Lawrence was warned by email; his phone was not receiving voice messages and his secretary admitted that 85% of the time she could only contact him by email too. As far as the Law was concerned, The Stone was cut. So was it the Law of the land as it was written in The Stone.

 **Rise and shine sleepyhead**

 _(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)_

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 6:40am**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship, captain's quarters**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Nathan walked out of his en-suite bathroom; towel wrapped around his waist and another in his hands as he vigorously dried his short cropped grey hair. Grumping to himself about his old age addling his memory, he made for his closet where he had forgotten his clothes before showering. Getting on in age wasn't so much fun past 60. Even the sub's completely regulated climate systems were getting to his nerves lately. It just wasn't a valid replacement for the sun and wind on the beach of his island, where even the hazards of Mother Nature throwing out an occasional rainfall or tropical storm was actually a welcome respite from monotony and isolation.

As the captain of what was arguably presently the world's most dangerous warship afloat, Bridger had put back in service quickly two of the most necessary capacities that an officer needed to stay alive. He had far too many classified informations floating around his head and far too much technical expertise to think he was not a prime target for kidnapping or murder. His two best advantages were his quick reflexes that were helped by his lean-built physique and his incredibly good hearing. These were two vital assets when going around the politos in Washington DC, an active war theater or the scaffolds of a drydock with hundreds of workers and thousands of moving machines and parts. All of these situations were potentially lethal if they catch you off guard, some more immediately than others. In a functioning submarine, it meant the difference between hearing or not the tiny little noises that the bulkheads and girders make as their screws, rivets and welds move and shift along with the ship's movement and water pressure from outside, thus telling the mariners that all was well.

It was those two vital assets that made him hear and then react to the first signs of trouble just as he was buttoning his blue uniform trousers. Padding barefoot and still bare chested over to the couch, he knelt down next to the mop of wheat-blond hair barely visible from where the armrest would be. With infinite gentleness he placed a hand on top of the teenager's skull, asserting himself as a calm, safe presence to ease the struggling child out of his beginning nightmare. Nathan sighed in worry. Lucas had a habit of couch surfing with the crew whom he had befriended in his short stay aboard. It had rapidly been discovered that he suffered from intermittent bouts of insomnia and occasional nightmares that on at least two occasions had devolved into night terrors. His bunkmate had been scared so badly that they called the infirmary to obtain help in waking him safely. It looked like this was such an occasion in progress.

Oh boy, what a Sunday this was shaping up to be. Would you like an ulcer with your plate of stress, kind sir?

Nathan focused on the movements and noises from the youth as he ceased thrashing around the couch and his breathing regularized. Less than a minute later, a pair of sleepy flint-blue eyes was gazing around blearily, scanning rapidly the area, already alert against whatever could harm Lucas. That was another worrisome trait; he had a bad habit of waking up stressed and frightful, as if he had been attacked in his sleep before. Well, a certain captain who had some past training with the CIA would flush it out of him soon. They would have a few days together and he would insist on tagging along. The kid could tetch all he wanted; it wouldn't change Bridger's decision anymore. Besides, teenagers were normally pouty, moody and verbose about everything around them. Would the situation be really that different than normal?

"Hey there, kiddo… What was it this time? Nightmare or memory? Oh, ah… Good morning too, I guess… If you can call 06:45am good… Or morning yet 'cuz it feels like the dead of night to me still."

The boy's blinking eyes stilled and calmed, his shallow rapid breaths also slowing and deepening as he finally realized his location and who was near him. As the older man kept up a steady stream of gentle-toned prattle, the child yawned wide enough to pass an MR-class shuttle through his mouth with clearance on each side and then made faces at the feel of the sweat and cramps he always had when waking right from a nightmare. Moving himself around to properly sit on the couch while keeping the comfortably warm blankets around his thin frame, Lucas shook his head to set his hair out of his face and eyes. That was the practical aspect of the length he kept it, despite many laughs and quips from the crew about looking like a moving weeping willow out of a fantasy novel; one or two shakes of the head and everything was in place and stayed there without effort. The fact it looked cool and he liked longish hair was also nice.

After another jaw-breaking yawn, he scratched at his chest while pursing his lips, wondering what he was missing that had set off the alarm bells in his head. Oh, yes! Suddenly getting up, blankets still clinging tigthly about him, the boy moved towards the bathroom door with clear intent, leaving a bemused sailor in his wake. Less than five minutes later and he came back to sit on the couch with a wide, easy smile and was already leaning with the intent to return to the Land of Nod when the aggressive tinny bell of his cellphone jerked both he and Bridger in surprise. Allowing a deep sigh to escape, the teen fished around under the couch next to where he had laid his head for the night and came out, pulling up his work satchel from which he removed the vibrating, buzzing and sound blaring device. Bridger winced in sympathy for the barely woken boy; that damn alarm made more noise than a mark 9 torpedoe exploding!

"Captain, sir… Did you by any chance allow people access to the deck-E electronics vault? Cuz the sensors I placed all around are telling me that somebody by-passed the regular alarms and is in the process of opening the airlock's outer valve… And even the hydraulic oil lines that you put in the design to serve as manual connection to a bell in the security office and the bridge have been compromised by what my readings are! This is serious, sir!"

Nathan wasted no time in reaching his desk and flipping two switches; one to call up the security camera's live feed to his monitor and the other to immediately send a team of armed sailors to stop whoever was trying to penetrate the ship's S.C.I.F. ( _Secured Classified Information Facility_ ). These bozos would learn the hard way that the Navy never sleeps nor wavers in its vigilance, especially not under Bridger and the people he kept aboard. Damn! He owed the kid again! Ah, well! He did think that Lucas had earned his many jobs in full, so no biggy; right?

"Bridge to captain! Sir, we have some weird metal bell ringing and we can't find where it is. If you hear it in the background, could you tell us what it is? We've… Ah… We were never told of a bell like that one during training so… I'm kind a clueless here, sir. I'm sorry, sir!" The poor ensign who had been given the conn until morning shift was well and truly out of his depths here, poor lad. Nathan was about to say something when another voice from the background of the bridge noise rose in panick: "Fuck me hard! The computer's decided to flood parts of deck-E with fluoro-marker gas! And it's also closing blast-doors and re-routing steam from the water boilers to a set of pipes that I didn't know were there!"

Noticing the blanket-covered boy that now stood two feet in front of him, he saw Lucas had pursed his lips and was gritting his teeth, obviously preparing for a confrontation with the older mariner. "What do you know about this Lucas?" the captain asked in an even tone. No need to scare the boy if it was what he suspected already. That program to close doors was nice but the steam? Bridger would not have done that since the risks of accidental trigger were rather high. Lucas however would have prioritized securing the Vault at all costs and rationalized it as a statistically safe bet. Reality didn't roll numbers, it threw curve balls and exceptions while changing its on laws to meet whatever fancy took it that day. Bah! The kid was young, he would learn.

"Heu… I might have been a bit peeved about Shraeder and his monkeys traipsing around our house like cockroaches and I might have made a few teeny, ah… Improvements? Optimizations? Yeah! That's it! I optimized a few of the detection and automated response systems in zones of the grid that had weaknesses." The boy raised both hands defensively, gesticulating wildly as if he was preparing for Bridger to lash out at him. "Don't worry about it, sir! It was just a few quick fixes! Nothing permanent and mostly just through putting a few subroutines together with some existing physical parts that nobody really uses in daily jobs. Like the steam nozles to wash down the ship's insides in case of fire or chemical spill. They were built-in at the drydock when she was put together but they were never even tested in full! So… I might have thought up a few – innovative – ways to put them to use without compromising the actual primary function since it's the same job anyways…"

Bridger stood with his hands on his hips, a weird expression screwed on his face as he contemplated the clearly frantic and fearful teen that was now fidgeting and chewing his lower lip like he was about to be sent into the school principal's office for a 'talk' about his attitude. On one hand, it was incredibly amusing for Bridger since the poor kid was damn cute when he worried like that. It reminded him of Robert at that age on the very few occasions that his wife and he had to set their son's comportment back in line with what they expected of him. On the other hand, it also made Nathan wonder what he had ever done to the kid for him to be so damned nervous all the time around him, especially now that his status aboard had been legalized and set in stone. Well, another nugget to dig up in the gold mine of mysteries that was Lucas Wolenczak's mind and life. Later. Now he had a boat demanding her captain's attention.

Clearing his throat, he asked Lucas in clear clipped phrases: "Lucas, are you telling me that you turned the inside of my ship into a self-regulating vegetable steamer without telling me?" The kid's face as he tried and failed miserably to process the question was truly priceless and Nathan thanked himself for having had the forethought to install a few private, off-the-wires cameras and sensors in case of a break-in or things disappearing from his quarters. Now that he had a teenaged dormer in house, it also helped keep his mind at peace that any allegations of improper behavior from him against Lucas would be cleared out right away. It also meant that he could view the film of this conversation and print out the face the kid just made… For later use when the young man tried to assert that nothing ever caught him off guard, you know, just to keep his feet on the ground… Snort!

"Captain!" The poor teenager replied in a strangled voice, not sure if he should laugh about the comparison or hide under the couch from sheer embarassement at how the other man described his improvised security measures. This was serious, damn it all! And the comm-line to the bridge was open, too! Speaking of which…

"So it was that bilge rat bastard who set up those alarms and gave the bridge crew a heart attack?" Came the angry voice from the ensign. "Hope you tan his hide! What the fuck was he thinking setting up ship-wide alarms anyways? And they sound like old schoolyard recess bells too!"

Seeing the boy in front of him go pale in fright, again, Bridger had no patience for the officer at the other end of the line. "Listen here, you dimwitted gull! That's the Chief of Mammal Engineering, Chief Computer Analyst and GAO's rep aboard that you just blasted and said you wanted to see beat like a dog! I want you in conference room A, besides my quarters at 11:00am sharp for a talk with me about keeping your ill-mannered reactions and bigotry to yourself! Is my message clear ensign?"

Taking a deep breath, Bridger then answered the question from the now mostly silent bridge, all the while taking objects from his desk to fill his pockets and prepare for the trip down to the ship's guts. A short hand gesture had Lucas dropping the blankets on the chair near him and scram to find his jeans and flannel shirt to dress up for the sudden job downstairs as his commander had made it clear he wanted him along.

"The old-style alarm is connected by several redundant oil-lines to a secured compartement on deck-E, in the ship's lowest point. It indicates that somebody thought they could access the most secured computers and data modules in our care without anybody having a clue we were penetrated by spies. The alarm is from my original design of the ship whilst the steam-routing was implemented by Lucas as part of his ad-hoc measures to secure the systems until we reach dock and design permanent devices and protocols to avoid another Shraeder-typed scenario from unfolding in our house again. I have already sent armed security to the Vault and you should in fact have seen that command pass since it also triggers alarms and messages of its own." Bridger clipped on his PAL device and placed the antique mechanical diver's watch on his left wrist when the fatidic news came from the loudspeakers in the monitor: "Heu… Begging the captain's pardon, sir, but we haven't heard a peep from the systems, or security or anything else about whatever's going down on deck-E. And there ain't no comm chatter from security either. The office, the marines, the armory, it's all silent. Sir, are sure the alarms did what they should?"

Seeing the teenager now dressed with his satchel on his left shoulder, ready for the road, the captain answered "Call Crocker directly on his PAL and ask about the alarms! Have another begin calling the security office and the armory ASAP! And you call the senior officers right after you drop me! I'm heading down to deck-E and Lucas is coming with me! Bridger out!"

The boy's anxious face told him many things but he could not make heads or tails of them so he asked out loud as he made hand gestures to get the boy walking briskly towards the current crisis, "Okay kiddo, what's the panick-inducer this time? I know I didn't have any coffee in the pot when you woke up but that doesn't mean the ship is down to sharing Kristen's tea until we dock." He tried to pass a light hearted joke to get the boy talking. Sometimes it worked with Robert, sometimes it insulted him as he tought he wasn't being taken seriously. In either case; calm answer or explosive outrage, Nathan always got the vital answer to deliver assistance to the child in his care. Today would be no different, even with alarms, iffy comm lines and obvious breakdowns in ship-wide security protocols.

Blowing an exasperated breath through his nose, the teen was now in a right proper sulk. "Did you hear that guy on the comm? He called me a bilge rat! After I bled and killed for him and the rest! I oughtta march up there and sock him one right in the face! It would improve how he looks, too!" The now steaming kid growled, much to the amusement of his superior as the poor little guy was barely 155 pounds whith all his clothes and equipment. He could imagine how the crew on the bridge would just not take seriously any threats made by the teenager until they saw him gut a man with a grapefruit spoon like he had. The video from the mess-hall pantry had almost put him off ever hunting and butchering his own deer. Almost. Instead he would ask Lucas if he had ever gone hunting and offer to go on a little expedition together. Bringing back a rack of antlers to place in his cabin would certainly make the – manlier - elements of the crew give him some slack. In the meanwhile, he let the younger man grumble and tetch under his breath about the many traumatic ways he would teach the poor officer at the conn about respecting younger, less muscular guys who actually used more than one brain cell during their daily duties. Bridger could only wince in sympathy for the poor ensign since he could imagine not beeing able to take a single hot shower all week if Lucas really did manage to program the waterflow controllers in the shower halls to recognize the man and then allow only frigid water to come out.

Note to self, Bridger thought; stay very honest and have a light, gentle hand when establishing discipline for Lucas since the kid fought back dirty and could reach where it hurt for real.

 **The lawman cometh to town**

 _(Full Metal Alchemist - Amestris)_

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 6:58am**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship, deck-E, S.C.I.F. Vault**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Nathan strode through the labyrinthine bowels of deck-E with a grace and speed that only he who designed her and the workers at the shipyard could match. This was the lowest, darkest, dankest and most noisome of the ship's five decks. It was dubbed 'the machinery deck' which was in fact a misnomer since any mariner would tell you that a submarine is filled with machines all over inside and outside and it's the humans that are in the way of the machines doing their jobs right. While there were the engines' main components, the water tanks, pumps and plumbing controls, ventilation and air cooling plants, several backup diesel generators, and oh, a few thousand other sundry knicknacks that all helped keep the boat afloat, it still was not the only 'machinery' deck at all. Deck-C which housed the central parking silos and massive outer doors for the launch bays was certainly as mechanically equipped as deck E, just differently. The fusion core and its fuel reclamation systems, along with the plasma autoclave to destroy their garbage and toxic wastes were on deck-D. The maglev was so tall and beefy that it took two decks to put it inside the ship's hull. The passenger cabin was on deck-A from the bridge to the worshops in the ship's tail but the wheel bogies and rails were in the maintenance slash infrastructures & services tunnel beneath on deck-B. And hadn't that given a nightmare to the shipyard people when they built her. Nathan smirked in vengeful satisfaction when he remembered Bill Noyce's disbeleiving face when he first saw the design. Oh, good times, those were!

Hearing mumbling and grunting next to him, Bridger pulled his attention back to the present and the teenager escorting him to what could be a potentially dangerous situation. He honestly would have preferred to tell Lucas to head to the bridge or the security office to stay safely out of the way but the communications and alarm systems being compromised meant anything could happen and he would not know. Also, since the boy made some – optimizations - to the ship's internal security, he needed the kid at arm's length to interrogate and get him to set things in working order. Snort! Crocker and Hitchcock were going to have a cow when they heard what the brat did with the sensors and steam nozzles! Note to the captain: protect the hide of the little runt until we are out of danger and then stand aside to enjoy the show!

"Heu, captain? Are you sure it's a good idea for me to come here? If there's danger, maybe I shoulda gone to the bridge? Or stayed in your cabin to act as coordination hub or something?"

Nathan blinked his eyes in surprise; not only did the kid's words match his own thoughts they also showed that Lucas was thinking with his mind, not his pride or trying to go glory-hunting. Hum! Nice! He would have even better matter to work with in the coming weeks. Making Lucas into a workable, reliable adult colleague was going to be an interesting, rewarding task; he could foresee it.

Explaining in short words what his reasoning was, the captain gestured with his hands to guide the teen along the way. He wanted to be in front so any danger would go through him first thus giving the boy a chance to escape and get help. "I thought about it but the alarms and comms seem compromised from what I heard a few minutes ago, when we spoke to the bridge crew. In that case, I prefer to have you beside me. That and you are the only one who knows how you modified the sensors and steam cleaners so I am kinda stuck with you for now. Oh, and we will be having a conversation at some point about your interesting habits of 'optimizing' my ship without obtaining my permission beforehand. While it was a good idea, and well executed by what I can see, you should still have cleared it with me first."

Seeing the boy was again chewing his lower lip in worry and looking straight down to his feet as he walked, Bridger sighed and wondered again what kind of childhood the kid had lived to be so susceptible to even the slightest verbal rebuke. He had even put in a straight out compliment in there, too! What was the teen so afraid of? "Talk to me Lucas! Don't hold it inside, I can't help you if you don't exteriorize the problem for me to see it and work with it."

"How much trouble am I in now? O mean, before the fuck-up with your damned joke about making me chief of mammal engineering, I was a minor in the eyes of the crew and Law. Now I'm not anymore. So what happens now? I put in programs of my own initiative and I reset the washdown system, all of it without getting clearance for it. I would have talked about it to the whole council at today's meeting; if you read my report and list of recommandations to secure the ship against another invasion scenario, it's listed there as 'in test phase' already. But just because of timing and somebody trying to spy on us already, it makes it look like I fucked the pooch again. Like I tried to take over the boat from you and I don't know what else people will say or think I tried to do behind your back. So what now? After we clear up the S.C.I.F.? The brig? Confined to quarters until the NCIS medicals and then on a plane to US mainland?"

Bridger stopped short and turned to look directly into the fright-filled flint-blue eyes of a child he was rapidly beginning to want to keep not only on his boat but near himself. The level of thoughtfulness, intelligence and honesty in this kid made him a bit jealous because he was so much more than Robert had been at that age. On the other hand, he was also much more lost-at-sea in his own life than Robert and his friends had ever been in their worst situations. And Robert never killed anybody before he was 24 years old and serving aboard his first ship's posting. What Lucas had lived in the last three days, it would pull apart the mind of most children, teenagers and young adults that Bridger had known in his life to date.

Moving carefully his arms to give Lucas the time to adjust to the gesture, he placed his hands gently on the boy's shoulders and squeezed in support. "Nothing will happen to you that will be bad. If you did indeed put it in the recommandation part of your report, then it was part of your job attributions and the spy just caught us flatfooted, as well as himself too. And even if you hadn't, due to the situation, the clean-up still underway, and the urgency of securing everything ASAP, you would not be the only one with backlogged admin and reports not finished writing. I know for a fact that I have two such documents incomplete, Hitchcock has about four, Ford three and Crocker has almost seven in his to-do pile. And I'm not even looking beyond the infrastructural departments into the science labs and special projects; those can wait at the back of the lineup. You will be fine, Kiddo. You will be safe, sound and fine. Okay?"

Lucas answered with a one shouldered shrug, hands deep in his jeans' pockets, but he kept his eyes locked on Bridger's and Nathan considered that the biggest victory and most important upgrade to his day yet. Now if they could only clean up this latest snafu and get some breakfast in the mess hall; he needed coffee and the idea of not brewing a pot during his shower time was coming back to haunt him as he could feel the lack of energy. His attention was caught by a popping noise followed by a fizzing one. Lucas held up a small 8 ounces night-black aluminum can with the tab pulled off; it was a caffeinated beverage called 'Black Bullet of Living Death'. The label garanteed it would keep you up and working, even though you might temporarily have the emotions and social skills of a zombie until you could sleep off the effects.

Nathan gave the teen a gimlet eye and asked "Aren't these the ones that had an official health advisory from the USDA and US Department of Health last month? AND aren't you supposed to be over 18 to drink this safely? Humm?"

Lucas fidgeted under the older man's gaze but firmed up and replied with some heat to his words: "I know those things! I'm not some idiot that's going to guzzle a case and wonder why I had a heart infarction at 16! I do have some officially credited health sciences formation, you know! I usually only take a quarter of the can and mix it in some regular soft drink like SevenUp or Coke to diffuse the potency and not make myself sick. Sometimes, I really need to pull an all-nighter and past 24 hours straight, the stuff gives me some fumes to last until the 30th hour and then I don't have a choice but to crash and sleep off the exhaustion. I also try not to do this more than once per month to not become sick or addicted. The stuff IS NOT good for your health in large quantities and it does actively modifiy your blood-chemistry for about 12 hours after drinking it, so I have always been extra careful when I drink some. Now stop griping at me and drink it; I opened it for you in lieu of coffee or tea. We don't have time for a pit stop and I can hear the stomping pace of the marines coming in."

With pursed lips and a look that promised the conversation was not over, Bridger took the small can and took an experimental taste of about half a mouthful. Berk! It tasted like a mixture of root beer, coffee, tea, chocolate and coca-cola that had been left on the hot plate for a week in the summer sun. But he had to admit, the concentrated caffeine and herbs was starting an effect already and he hadn't even swallowed yet. Now that he had, he could see Lucas' point about taking it diluted in something blander to change the taste. He always knew he was a smart kid. Blergh! What a rotten taste!

"Thanks Kiddo. It was a nice thought, but with a taste like that, I think I'll stick to my old post syrup from the mess hall. At least I won't feel it as it's killing me, contrary to that thing that really should have a lot more than an age warning on it." Blergh! Nathan was desperatly trying to salivate to clean the tsate out of his mouth.

The smarmy little brat at his side smirked wide and playfully, teasing out loud: "What's the matter? The big bad captain can't take a little bit of medicine without choking? Maybe I shoulda put it in some water with sugar and cinnamon to make it easier on your old pipes. I shoulda guessed that at your age, you weren't able to handle the hard stuff anymore!"

Nathan stopped moving, a hand over his mouth as he had been trying to get some feelings back in his uncooperative tongue, and just stood stock still, looking at the teenager who a moment ago was practically scared paler than his usual complexion. "Why, you pasty little gremlin! I oughta…!"

The captain's threat went incomplete as chief Crocker's booming laughter was heard in the corridor right behind them. "Ha! Looks like he got you good, didn't he, han cap'n!" The older officer laughed at his old friend of forty years. He might be just a lieutenant but he didn't let a lower rank stop him from doing the hard jobs and going against the high-ranked idiots when he had to. And the most important aspect of such a low rank was that he was never invited to shindigs and political events whereas Nathan always got dragged in kicking and screaming to do the trained pony routine of proving to the DC elite that yes, sailors could have a brain and technical skills just like regular people.

"Weeell, hello there Lucas!" Crocker exclaimed in a playful mood of his own. "I'll have you know that I slept quite well indeed, knowing that 'Mauler Lucas' was aboard to protect us from home invaders and criminals of all sorts of low-born crass. I did indeed."

With a sudden pursing of lips and half-closed eyes, his face somewhat pinched in outrage, the boy responded with his best biting sarcasm for such an early hour in the morning: "I't couldn't have been beauty sleep, then! And I'm sure I can still see straight despite the hour and not having enough sleep after the last three days of shit we went through. So, I'm guessing it was booze-induced. And that's weird 'cuz I coulda sworn the captain had requisitioned all the bottles for the Brass that was coming to sniff around after Shraeder crashed our party. Why Gator! Have you been holding back on the good uppity upper crust folk who control us little people's destinies? Oh, the shame!"

Bridger was looking at the kid beside him as if he had changed color or something whilst Crocker and his security people were laughing it out in full force. Manilow wiped a tear out of his eye and clapped the boy on his back hard enough to make his whole body move forward from the impact. "Ha! That's the spirit, kid! Don't let 'em see you sweat or panic! You're in the big boys' leagues now so chin up, straighten your spine and look 'em in the eyes while you're tellin' it like it is! Ain't that right Nate?"

Said Nate was in the process of ordering his thoughts about many things and replied silently by gesturing for the marines to take point while Lucas, Gator and himself would close the line. The group marched on and arrived at the location of the Vault merely a minute later.

 **We caught us a live one!**

(Stargate SG1 – opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 7:03am**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship, deck-E, S.C.I.F. Vault**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

"Well, this is a nice pickle we're in." spoke a despondant black man as he rubbed the back of his bald head. Jonathan Ford just knew that he was going to get razzed by the crew good and hard for this one. Oh, yes he would! He walked himself right into a lobster cage with his eyes wide open and didn't even blink till the trap closed behind him. Haaargh! The captain was going to kill him for this!

"Commander Ford! What in tarnation are you doing in the airlock to MY ship's S.C.I.F.?"

 _'Speak of the devil and he shall appear!'_ Jonathan could remember his grand-mother saying in his childhood. Man, this was not a time for the old gal to be right about stuff!

"Hello captain. Good morning to you too, sir." Ford tried in his calmest, most urbane tone. Suffice it to say it failed miserably when the pasty little gremlin next to the older officer snorted before breaking out in loud guffaws of belly deep laughter.

"Ah! Ah! Ah! We caught us a live u'n cap'n! Maybe us men can have some meat in da galley for t'change! Though, he's a mite small thar 'ne! Maybe we put him back an' catch againt next year wh'un he's fatt'n up!"

The marines were practically hollering in laughter while chief Crocker was passing a hand in his face to wipe the tears of hillarity out of his watering eyes. Bridger tried desperatly to maintain an officerly façade but it crumbled miserably when his friend of forty years had to lean against the bulkhead to avoid falling to the floor from laughing himself silly. The laughter from the ship's master joined the enlisted men and Ford just knew right there that this would haunt him for the rest of his career. He even had a vision of the captain's promotion committee asking him about his _'notoriously bad handling of classified materials and situations'_ with this incident in mind. He was screwed and couldn't find a way out. Ah, Crap!

"Humph! – Cough!" Bridger put a fist before his mouth to cough out his excess of humor and calm himself whilst Gator got the men back in line and silent. Well, okay, almost silent, but at least they lined up nicely. So disciplined those marines were…

"Well, now that we've had our fun… Perhaps the good Ex-O would care to tell his captain why it was he thought it a good idea to sneak around MY ship's bowels and poke around the S.C.I.F. without appropriate clearance? I am waiting, Jonathan. But do take your time." Bridger poked idly at the ceramic covered metal grate that had dropped from the ceiling to forbid exit from the airlock in case somebody breached the code to get inside but didn't have the actual authorization to be there. "After all, it's not like you are going anywhere soon." Nathan finished in a menacing tone, all humor gone.

Ford winced at the words and mannerisms of his CO; he was in shit up to his neck and it would only get deeper when he learned why he was here. Gulping in anxious anticipation of the coming blow-out, Jonathan was silently thankful the Navy had abolished corporal punishments and keel-hauling about a century ago. Visions of himself tied to one of the metal girders in the mess hall getting whipped raw kept swimming in front of his eyes. He dearly hoped Bridger would be as humane as his reputation claimed and at least be quick with whatever he did.

"Well, sir, it was like this." The commander began while rubbing his sweaty palms on the legs of the blue jumpsuit uniform he wore this morning. "After the mess up with Shraeder and his men, I had some worries about the Vault and wondered if I should check it or just ask you to validate it was secure. Someone to whom I shared my concerns made it clear that as the Ex-O and second-in-command, it was my duty to physically come and inspect the Vault to be sure with my own eyes."

Seeing Lucas's eyes squinted in thought, the man knew he was screwed over. Damned. Except it seemed the captain had the same thought at the same moment since he spoke again in menacing tones.

"You and this person wouldn't happen to have shared such concerns because of who was recently appointed as the Authority Responsible for Cyphered Affairs and Classified Materials aboard our good ship, would it commander? It would have absolutely no relation to the fact that Lucas was now in charge of this sector of the ship's infrastructures as well as the cybernetic contents, hum? Who, commander? Who was it that pushed you or empowered you to thinking that he was incompetent or too unreliable to hold this function, position and rank amongst our community?"

Ford was now sweating all over to the point he just knew he'd need a shower and a good glass of chilled juice to get back some control over his body's reactions. He had never realized just how scary Bridger could get when properly riled up. And pissing on the kid's patch would do that for him. If only he'd known that an hour ago!

Looking his CO straight in the eyes, he answered: "It was Chief of the US Navy Staff, general McFarlane, sir. He called me on secured line #4 at 06:30am ship's clock to ask about the Shraeder situation and the fallout with Lucas being made the GAO's Operational Security supervisory agent aboard. I had some reservation about what is well known, and you admitted it publicly yourself sir, a mistake of inattention and going too fast when filling out forms that had not existed the last time you commanded a ship. It so happened that the General shared my concerns and signed me a letter giving me permission to test out the S.C.I.F.'s perimeter and, if I got inside, test the quality of the cybernetics parts and the cyphering."

The teenager snorted in derisive, contemptuous laughter that resonated around the men with a meanness never before heard on his part. "You dumbkopf dumbass mule! I just got the job less than 24 hours ago! I have never even gone inside the damned room! It's like the second time in my four months aboard that I see the door! How the hell could I be held responsible for the contents or the CPU parts or the databases if I've never had access before?"

Lucas shook his head, angry to the point of boiling rage. "McFarlane was pulling your strings like a puppet and you danced along to his tune. He's wanted for years to make trouble for me to get me shipped off to a _'tough love boot-camp'_ for juvenile delinquents run by the church of morons that he's deacon at. He'd get a juicy commission in cash the moment my name was on the list and then get applauded by the sluts-of-the-pews the very first Sunday after I got to the camp. The fact that the camp was closed twice and now operates on a limited provisional license is no doubt meaningless! That all the **allegations** of paedophilia, torture, beatings and exploitation of the children in sweat-shop conditions **were proven true** is also surely not worth talking about! The kids were made to work like slaves 16 hours a day to supposedly earn their keep while at the same time the cursed fucking wankers were billing the parents 36,000$ a year and then billed the Florida State DCFS another 36,000$ for the same damned reason! They're perjurers, torturers and apostollates of criminality and felony!"

The child was so riled up now he was almost hyperventilating himself into a conniption. Nathan moved to place a steadying hand on the middle of his back and the other on his shoulder, just to give him emotional support from a human presence. He was immensely releived when the child didn't shake off his hands or try to move away.

Lucas continued reaming out Ford in public. He had a full abcess to purge and nobody was going to silence him about this! "If you wonder where their blasted _'christian charity'_ they keep harping about is hiding, I'll point you to the shit pits out back! Because, oh yeah! They dond't have no plumbing! Apparently, one of their ex-marines coaches that got sacked from the corps on RAPE and MOLESTATION of recruits charges had the bright idea that running water made the kids weak and fat so he made them have to wash in the boat canal and shit by squatting over a trench in front of all the 200 people that live in the camp! Girls besides boys without separations!"

The teenager was now shaking with frustration, rage and also a good dose of raw fear. If he hadn't rapidly taken control of the washdown network to make his ad hoc intruder repulsion system, McFarlane would have gotten dominative control over him. The officer would have called not only for his being destituted from all his positions and jobs, but also for him to be sent to his church-run camp for some _christianly morally uplifting education_ in the _hallowed arts of discipline and obedience_ to adults. Fucking turd-cake of a child-rapist! As if Lucas wasn't really aware of the General's desires! How many times had the teen refused the man's orders to perform sex acts on him to _'earn'_ the General's confidence and trust just in the last ten years? How many times had McFarlane told him that only submissive, docile boys could be trusted and let free to roam about in society? Damned that blasted white trash son of a church-whore!

"Lucas! Peace, child! We'll take it from here on out." Crocker's gravelly voice spoke over all the noises. The brawny, and pudgy, older officer walked to the grate and rapped his knucles on it, causing a little hot water to trickle from the ceiling to sluice down the ceramic roll-down grillwork. Ford backed himself to the S.C.I.F.'s doorway until his back was flat against the armored panel and tried very much to stay still and non-threatening. The looks on Crocker and Bridger's faces were not good for him and the way Lucas was watching him was eerily reminescent of how he looked at the back of Shraeder's head as he swung the hammer. Speaking of which…

"Lemme at 'em!" the light-weight teenager growled, enraged. "I can make sure for you he won't ever compromise classified rooms again!" he exclaimed as he pulled out of his satchel a large monkey wrench covered in grease and blood spatter. Waving the ten pounds of tempered steel at the grate, Lucas advanced and slammed the wrench in the grill, causing a light showering of burning hot water to cascade from the ceiling for about ten seconds. The sudden cloud of steam wet the clothes of the four people closest to the grillwork and made Ford actually wimper in fear. Being parboiled to death like a hot dog sausage in a steamer was not a good way to go!

"Lucas! Kiddo! Back away from Ford, now! And where did you get that wrench anyways? And why, may I ask, is there so much blood all over it? Is this evidence from the boat's invasion?" Nathan grabbed the wrench from the child's hands.

"Sorry captain, sir! I kinda forgot I kept a little sometin in case they weren't all found. Sorry!" answered Lucas, who looked rather sheepish now as he joined his hands behind his back and fidgeted from one foot to another, chewing his lower lip, head bowed down to endure another public reprimand.

Crocker snorted in exasperation then poked the boy in the hip with his index finger, just to get a reaction out of the moping kid. "Bah! T'was nottin! Just don't forget stuff like that again! That there's Hitchcock's favorite monkey in engineering and the only one trained well enough to follow orders if I listen to her right. Better get it back to its place a'fore she comes lokkin for it!"

The teenager was now pale again, with a pitiful expression on his face to boot. "Ah, crud! I took Marty without realizing it! She's gonna kill me just on principle and then she'll assign me to do her whole department's paperwork on top just cuz she's got the rank for it! PLEASE! Can't you help a little guy adrift in the dark? PLEEEAAASE!" Lucas joined his hands in supplication before himself and bowed from the waist towards the security chief and captain, trying desperatly to garner some sympathy for his plight.

Bridger made an 'harrumph!' sort of sound and retorted in mock-sterness:"Oh, no, young man! You have gotten away with far too much as it is today! A little disciplining from Kathy will set you straight on the narrow path we expect from you! And there better not be any complaints about her being too severe or harsh! If I have to get involved you'll really have something to cry about, do you hear?"

The marines heard his voice and several saw his facial expressions so they knew he was just pulling the kid's leg for a bit of fun. Crocker thought it funny as hell, especially with the face the kid was making right now. Ford was simply glad nobody was jostling the grate anymore and could not give a damn for the kid at the moment. Nathan however saw a problem in the way Lucas had frozen is face and body language in what could be considered the human equivalent of a 'screen saver'. It was like the kid had suddenly lost all motor control and just stood there; utterly unresponsive except for the visage of fright he wore.

Speaking in a low, morose voice that tried but failed to hide the feelings of fear and betrayal, Lucas responded to his commanding officer. "Yes sir. Wathever you command, sir. Whatever the commander does I will accept and not complain, sir. What are your present orders, sir? Should I release the intruder repeller system, sir?" His voice was low, brittle and had an edge of weariness it hadn't had yet when speaking to the ranking sailors aboard in the four months he had been on ship. He joined his hands low in front of himself with his feet spaced at shoulder width and looked at the wall at a neutral spot between the two ranking officers present on the 'good' side of the bars. He had placed himself in the 'at ease, report' position used by militaries the world over and was now passively awaiting instructions.

It looked and felt unnatural to every soldier present. This was Lucas, a bouncing energetic ball of goofy goodness, enthusiasm and helpfulness. To see him reduced to a fearful child awaiting the anger-driven reactions of the soldiers around without even trying to plead his case or protest he had the right and the job to act as he did chilled many to the core. There was something in this child's life that was not going well and several decided they would start making some calls home to ask questions from friends and contacts off-ship.

Deciding that nothing more could be gained from speaking idle chatter or joking around, Bridger exhaled a deep, worried breath as he exchanged a look with Gator and the lead marine of the patrol. Turning his face fully to Lucas he spoke his orders clearly, in an even tone to try and calm the child's fears. "CCA Wolenczak. I mean, Lucas, I would like to let go of my Ex-O. For now. He and I will have a serious conversation later on about following feloneous orders from people not authorized to give such orders to begin with. In the meanwhile, I happen to like the way you set up the system. Reset it and make certain that you have the details in an annex separate from your main recommandations file when you hand in your report at the ship's council's meeting tonight, at 19:00pm after dinner. Execute and then process out the rest of your day as you had planned it."

Bridger moved out of the way to let the anxious teen access the airlock so he could temporarily shut off the washdown system while the grate was retracted into the ceiling and Ford was taken to the infirmary to make sure he had not suffered vapor burns. As the jittery kid passed in front of him, Nathan suddenly moved to very gently place his left hand on his chest, over Lucas's heart, and his right hand at the teen's nape, giving his neck a gentle delicate squeeze to comfort him.

Nathan used his most persuasive voice and tried to instill calmness into his words and gestures so the child could absorb it and lower his fear and anxiety. "Commander Hitchcock will do nothing to you while I am around Lucas. Nobody will harm you aboard ship while we stand beside you."

Nathan saw the boy chewing his lower lip in doubt and understood that he would not get any aquiescence from him today. Not with his lack of sleep, lack of food and his emotions visibly all over the place even when he made a visible effort at controlling his reactions against his instincts. Lucas had given in the last 72 hours more than many adults had to give. It was time for him to rest and recover until tonight. "Go, and then go back to sleep a few hours. It will do you good." Bridger spoke softly.

With a quick nod, Lucas took less than 30 seconds to disarm the steamers and retract the roll-down grill. Even before Ford had taken a step, the teen had practically sprinted out of the area, and was flat out running when he reached the staircase upwards. The soldiers watched him go, wrapped in fear, uncertainty and probably humiliation at his own emotions and reactions having been publicly seen.

No, this was not a good Sunday morning for anybody anymore.


	2. THE STORM IS COMING

**SeaQuest**

This story takes place in season 1, just after the SeaQuest was violently boarded and taken over by Colonel Shraeder and his mercenaries. I will be modifying several elements of that episode to fit with the fic, notably that there were more mercs in the transport, they were more violent and Lucas had been significantly more reactive and aggressive when helping to safeguard the ship and crew. The modifications to the canon of the episode will be minor and showed as flashbacks or during discussion between crew members.

Read the beginning of Chapter 1 for the full disclaimer and notes.

 **DURA LEX, SED LEX**

 **The Law may be hard, but it is The Law**

 **SECOND CHAPTER; THE STORM IS COMING**

 **Botched Sunday morning in progress**

(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 08:00am**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; captain's cabin**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Nathan walked into his cabin, locking the door behind him, emotionally spent already from the short yet dreadfully rude morning to date. He and Crocker had escorted Jonathan Ford to his quarters to get notarized copies of the videos, emails and written orders from general McFarlane about Lucas and what exactly the general wanted to see done. They had listened to the very last video of the batch as it was the most immediately relevant; Bridger could easily say the man had some serious pedophile tendencies on top of his unbridled religious fanaticism. He had to send this up to Bill Noyce ASAP and see what protections they could get for and around Lucas. Although, he guessed that the teenager now having the General Accounting Office as his main backer would make McFarlane retreat. The man's department had way to much cash flow and inventory 'unaccounted' for and far too many dark nooks containing illegal secrets to be comfortable taking on the one part of the Washington alphabet soup that made it their daily bread to find and expose people's unlawful misuse of public positions and taxpayer funds.

The captain snorted in spiteful contempt as he remembered the naked fear and panic in the general's voice and demeanor throughout the film as he railed against the civilian police agency interfering in a military jurisdiction, even going roughshod over NCIS and the JAG, something one did at their perils as many could attest. The US Navy's law keepers had a very quiet, laidback attitude in public, but on the case, they rocked your world and made it clear nobody pissed on their patch but them and theirs.

McFarlane was practically on the verge of sedition and treason with some of the things he said to Ford, going openly against the Department of Justice (DoJ), the State Department (DoS) and the official position taken by the Oval Office, in other words; His Honor, The President, THE Commander-In-Chief of all US military assets and personnel. General McFarlane must be pretty desperate to want to take his own Boss-of-all-Bosses on the dance floor for this skit. It smacked of illegitimacy, illegality, immorality and a terminal case of a pervert pining after the child he was never able to truly victimize to his heart's content. Well, Nathan was going to pull an old favorite and ask his good buddy, the much vaunted Billy "pig farmer" Noyce about where exactly McFarlane had stashed his dirty laundry and then he was going to hang it out in public, just to get the man's reaction on the record.

William Allard Boyd Noyce had been in the US Navy Intelligence for over 90% of his time in uniform and gotten his nickname "pig farmer" for his weird predilection of having enemies of America and her allies disappear in the dead of night to be found again a few months later being chomped on gleefully by pigs in a muck pen. Now, since pigs were omnivorous and scavengers, with a natural lack of any morals or taste for choosing what they eat, they had historically been a well known way to eliminate evidence of murder all over Europe and the American colonies. In some Old World countries it had even been a method of execution to bury somebody to his hips in the pen and then let in a half dozen hungry hogs and sows to eat the guy alive in bits and pieces as they excavated the tasty treat from its hole. Even in these modern days, when a human disappeared in or near pig ranching installations, most cops gave up hope right away of ever finding any physical evidence at all.

Bill Noyce had been relentless in his pursuit of terrorists but specifically of deserters, saboteurs and traitors who sold out US Navy secrets to make a quick buck. Whenever these people managed to leave US soil, their ends were always rather messy and not appetizing. Noyce would get the full packet about McFarlane and his instincts to clean house would activate like a bad case of OCD triggering at full blast. He would not stop until the man's partially chewed innards were pulled from the slavering maw of a hog somewhere in Texas or Alabama.

Just maybe the man's unfortunate little accident could happen in Canada. McFarlane owned since his early thirties a very remote and isolated hunting camp in the far north of Alberta, almost on the Northwest Territories' provincial border in fact. Just looking at the emplacement on the geographic map made you realize that there was something bad about that plot of land. No inbound roads at all; not even a farmer's dirt driveway or a hunter's path. No navigable waterways, no lakes or rivers, no ponds on the property, no manner at all to come by canoe. The whole square was surrounded by hills and crags with only the very short and narrow private runway for a small 8-seats or smaller airplane. When somebody buys 400 acres (20 x 20) of tick and deerfly infested forest then only builds a two-story 12-bedroom ranch house, a garage for 12 Econoline-sized vehicles and a massive barn for tons of corded stove wood and lockers to keep food safe, then your guts starts churning. Especially when the whole setup takes less than 1,000 by 1,000 feet with a 20 foot tall **corrugated steel wall** fencing it in. And it sits right smack in the middle of the perfectly square plot. No, there was something that stunk to high heavens about general McFarlane's career, life and little hole in the dirt up north.

Looking around his cabin interrogatively, Nathan saw that Lucas was actually not present. The blankets were piled haphazardly on the couch where he had dropped them before the Vault incident. Then he spotted the boy's jeans, flannel shirt, sneakers and satchel pushed under the couch, hidden from view until he moved to stand besides the coffee table between the couches. Blinking in thought, he turned towards the bathroom door and saw it was closed and locked from inside as the colored indicator on the knob showed. Nathan mentally patted himself on the back for thinking of building the door handles with a system like hotels had where the locks had a small red metal tab that became visible on both sides when you set them. So the kid was probably in there showering, trying to cool down and set himself straight from all the stress, anxieties and, yes, humiliations of this morning.

Sitting on the near end of the very couch that the teen used as a bed last night, Nathan took out the data disks and printouts, fidgeting with them, thinking of McFarlane and his relation to Lucas, of how many large holes there were in the child's past that were still under the fog-of-war so to speak. And getting Lucas to reveal any information at all about himself was a full-time backbreaking labor of long hours and few rewards. To say the boy was a private person was like saying swiss banks were careful with client data. The kid would probably rip off his own arm and beat Nathan with the wet bleeding end before giving up anything about his past and emotions. Events like had happened this morning were not going to help Bridger to build a good, civil working relationship with the young man. And after that damned joke about the Chief of Mammal Engineering posting, then accidentally naming him Chief Computer Analyst and every other damn blasted mistake they, he, had made towards him, it was a miracle that Lucas was still willing to even try to work with them, let alone try to trust anything they said. It might explain his constant weariness and his behavior being fraught with uncertainty, but not all of it. Something else for Bill to dig around and play with. Then Nathan would come behind him with a broom and wheelbarrow to sweep it up and bring home to sift through and finally get his answers.

The older officer's meandering train of thought was stopped by the bathroom door opening almost silently and the boy stopping cold in the frame, surprised by the fact he was not alone anymore. Nathan observed quickly that he was already partially dressed in his usual loosely fit knee-length solid-beige boxers and an oversized light aqua-blue t-shirt that honestly did not look good with such a pale skin complexion. It made him look like a sickly Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost wearing an ultra-large blue recycling bin bag, the poor kid. His longish hair was still wet, falling straight around his head all stringy like the bead curtain from the 1970's that his wife had kept in the basement to partition her little hobby & crafts bench from the rest of the room. If Bridger hadn't read the medical fitness reports from right after Shraeder, he'd think the kid was sick and getting worse because he certainly didn't look any better than before his shower. In fact the only improvement was the distinct change in smell from 'worn-out adolescent' to 'evergreen forest with a teen boy scout in it' since the kid had rather obviously used the body wash available in the bathroom. After all, his own toiletries and necessities had been blown up by that nice grenade, along with most of his belongings. Nathan felt like going to the morgue and killing the bastard again. He'd do it right this time, too!

Since Nathan remembered well from Robert's own adolescence how prickly teen boys could be about their style and fashion sense, he abstained from sharing his uncharitable thoughts and kept his face neutral, his body language relaxed. This despite feeling a seething, spiteful contempt for McFarlane and a lot of resentful disappointment in Ford for falling so easily to the general's honey-coated poisonous words. The commander's ageist bigotry and personal dislike of Lucas were going to get addressed right and proper, they would. Just not right away as they still had mandatory NCIS medical exams and shore leave to go through. After that though, the housecleaning would start in earnest.

"I'll let you have the couch in a minute, Kiddo. I just want to make a few things clear and have confirmation that you understand them without any doubts in your mind as to their truthfulness. So come here and sit." Nathan spoke softly but firmly as he indicated the same couch but on the other end, where the pillows and blankets from last night were still placed. No need to crowd the boy by insisting he sit right next to him. He had a feeling that Lucas would much prefer to be out of arm's length for some time, and not just with Bridger.

His basic assumption was proved correct when Lucas walked around the coffee table next to the other couch before going around the far end to sit on the first couch's extremity as ordered. He was sitting so scrunched up in the angle formed by the backrest and the armrest that Nathan thought suddenly that he might have been better off asking the kid to sit on the second couch in front of him. At least then, the teen would not have been reacting with obvious fearful anxiety like this.

Exhaling a deep sigh, Bridger decided to not beat around the bush and just spit it straight out. Besides, one of the few things he knew for certain of Lucas's temperament was that he preferred direct, blunt words over flowery detours just for the sake of empty politeness or snotty etiquette. "All right, Kiddo. The events of the last few days have made me aware that there are several key issues that we as a crew have not addressed in regards to your presence aboard. This morning's less than festive wake-up call brought that home to me in spades. You do know that I was joking about commander Hitchcock's reaction to you taking that wrench, don't you? It was a joke, Lucas. In retrospect, I can see that it wasn't the right place and definitely not the good time in your life to pull your leg like that. It's now obvious that you are not feeling wanted enough by the crew, or secure enough in your many tasks and positions, for that sort of humor to pass by as it should."

Nathan paused his monologue to attentively watch the boy's reaction; he was not best pleased with what he saw. The teen's ears were fluorescent red in embarrassment, his lips pinched into a thin line with so much force that the muscles at the joint of the jawbone near the ear were straining. The child was making a painfully hard effort to keep silent whatever retort he wanted to shout out. His hands were closed into tight fists, clenched around the lower hem of his t-shirt. Bridger could swear he could hear the poor kid's molars grinding in humiliation and anger at the subjects being discussed despite the fact it wasn't the officer's idea or intent to cause so many negative emotions in his houseguest. The older man carded a weary hand in his hair before continuing his explanations.

"Now, there are two things that I want to make crystal clear here and for the rest of however long you live and work on my boat." Nathan made sure to use a decisive tone of voice and be assertive about this. On topics like this, there could be no uncertainty or it would fatally poison the relationship the kid had with the whole crew and lead to exactly the sorts of behaviors and problematics they wanted to avoid at all costs. Nathan was now in the hard position of mortgaging political and emotional capital that he didn't have in hand while hoping that his relationship with the young man would heal enough and progress well enough that he could repay the trust Lucas would extend during their talk. It would take weeks of effort on both their parts but Nathan had an honest, solid desire to make good by his youngest worker. He would no tolerate that the best, most competent, most honest and amiable person on board be shortchanged like this again, especially not by errors in leadership or management from himself.

"First thing: I don't care who or what may have told you otherwise; there are no institutional corporal punishments or off-the-books beatings of any sorts on any ship or base in the US Military, the NATO Alliance or the UEO Alliance. It's been banned for almost a hundred years now and it's been put textually into both military law and civilian law. Even the venerable International Maritime Law has been revised to severely curtail the powers of a captain to employ 'reasonable force' to keep his ship afloat and his crew and passengers in functioning order. So if ever somebody, whoever they may be, tells you otherwise or threatens you with a beating, you come to me and I will set them straight. I will charge them with making threats of bodily harm and put them in the brig until JAG or NCIS, or even the local country's Coast Guard, comes and gets them out of our lives. Is this clear?"

Lucas was chewing at his lower lip again; head bowed down so low his chin was almost touching his chest. His eyes were open but looking straight down to his bare feet. Even his toes were curled in an unconscious expression of worry and doubt. His hands were now resting on his thighs, fingers clenched into the flesh of each knee, the knuckles white with the effort of keeping himself from openly fidgeting in fretfulness while his superior lectured him. Nathan was not at all pleased by all the fear and anguish he saw through the teen's ticks and tells. His old CIA training from 4 decades ago was raising red flags that this boy needed a thoughtful protector and gentle advocate, not a brutal ham-fisted prison guard, to help guide him right. Well, he had come to the right boat and crew for that!

Nathan continued with his expose since he realized that expecting more than the most basal responses from Lucas in the circumstance was a waste of time. The young man was just not emotionally stable enough or self-assured enough right now to analyze the discourse and give a coherent reply, far less argue his side of things. Not that there was any arguing to do as Nathan was simply laying down two very fundamental concepts of Law and Morality that should have been explained and guaranteed to Lucas from day 1 aboard. He just hoped he could convince the kid it hadn't been his fault and that the chain-of-command would clear it all up efficiently if he gave them the chance to do their jobs right.

"Second thing: you are on this boat because you willingly accepted the assignment. I saw the agreement between the UEO and your father; it also carries your signature along with that of your own attorney and the California DCFS rep. Therefore; I don't know who has been peddling those rumors about you being a discipline problem, an immature delinquent or a mentally unstable flight risk, but I will find out and get to know why they are saying all that. I can guarantee you that my reaction to their storytelling will not be pleasant for them. The contract with your family is essentially 'in abeyance' as we speak because of a lot of things that I just became aware of, like the fact you were not given the right cabin. Also, we were supposed to assign you an enclosed, private office specifically on sea-deck to house your dolphin-linked experiments and the UEO's classified materials separately from your living space. There are other large segments of the blasted paper, like your salary, performance bonuses, function & rank benefits, pension plan and several 'optional privileges' which are spelled out quite clearly, that I haven't finished reading as it's rather long and dry but I am getting there. In the meanwhile, the addition of the GAO in the mix, their giving you a federal law-enforcement badge with a full formal recruitment packet means that the original contract might even be void or in severe mutual breach. Either ways, it looks like it's due to be redone wholesale."

At that pronouncement of doom, Lucas winced visibly and seemed to shrink into his side of the couch, as if readying for the blows to come. Nathan could feel his blood pressure steadily rise at the sight of this but externally kept a presentation of cool, professional attitude. The boy needed a stable, mature adult now, not the angry tumultuous soldier who wanted to march to Washington and beat some humanity into McFarlane. In a week or two, then maybe, the kid would be healthy and sound enough to have that particular conversation. And indeed, they would have a serious exchange about a great many things when they got back from shore leave, rested and refreshed with a new outlook on life.

Seeing no alternative as the reality would not change anyways, the captain continued to explain the present circumstances. "I don't know and can't figure out by myself what changes that means will happen. Other than you will be getting a proper cabin on a deck certified for human inhabitants instead of a glorified machinery locker. That place had never been designed or meant to permanently house anybody, damn it! It's got ammonia and natural gas pipes with breaker boxes and lines of liquefied fusion core coolant circulating through it because it was meant as a maintenance closet and control hub for the shut-off valves and power grid sector controls. Whoever put your bunk in there wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, I can tell you that! Anyways, except that very obvious change, everything else needs to wait until after the NCIS forensic physicals and shore leave. At that point the JAG will have managed to bring lawyers aboard and they will help us go through the blasted contract and see what is still applicable. So, as much as I like you Little Man, I have to be cruel and warn you of incoming briefcase-totters. We'll just have to muddle along as best we can when it happens. Is there anything that you want to say about either points that I have spoken of?"

The teen was fidgeting a mite less as he tasked his prodigious intellect to fully analyze and decorticate the lecture his commanding officer had given him. He still chewed his lower lip in worry but it seemed less stressful and more like an ordinary subconscious habit at this point.

"Hum, sir. This could be the time to tell you about a couple things of my own then. Before I hopped into the shower, I checked my emails and I got something's that I had been planning to speak with you about at lunch or so. My father as sent a letter expressing his 'dismay at the UEO's lack of leadership' when applying the contract that HE took HIS personal time and efforts to negotiate. He might also have mentioned something about 'shipboard mismanagement' and 'chain-of-command collapse' in there. He may also have sent that particular mail to about three hundred or so people, including the President, joint-chiefs-of-staff, UEO executive cabinet and a few others. He wrote in the letter that he has dispatched his own personal lawyer with his full support staff to come to SeaQuest and set things straight. And, heu… It's not the only piece of news I got from DC."

Lucas worriedly looked out the side of his eye as Nathan groaned in dismay and leaned back in to the couch's backrest, passing both hands on his face. Just what he needed; arrogant snobby lawyers from a rich snobby absentee parent more worried about his business reputation than the welfare of his child. Great! Just bloody great! Heaving another great sigh, he closed his eyes and gestured for the teen to send out the other problem.

"Well, heu, sir… You know how the GAO kinda gave me a post in their organization because of your other, ah… Little snafu, no that doesn't sound right… Heu… Executive action? With the forms the other day, right?" Seeing Nathan turn his head to glare at him, the boy swallowed past a lump in his throat and smiled a wan, weak smile that clearly meant 'spare me, I'm harmless' before continuing his reveal of another mess coming down the road at them. "Okay, then… It so happens, you see, that the GAO head honchos in DC got the complete official version of the contract my father had signed with the UEO about my position aboard SeaQuest. They wanted to see to it that their offering me a job didn't put them in a position to be sued for something like custodial interference or some such. They found problems. Lots of problems in the contract text itself to begin with. Then in the written report with pictures and films extracted from the security cameras that they ordered me to send them about my many jobs, functions, positions, ranks, physical status and living arrangements aboard ship. I got an urgent email from the Director of the General Accounting Office herself, Mrs. Jettera Sunderrappa. The GAO executive is sending a Senior Field Team as well as my brand new, never used before, Union Representative." Lucas looked quite taken aback by that concept. "It seems, sir, that as the GAO is a civilian agency like the FBI or the Secret Service, that their people are unionized and I now have a local of the 'Syndicate of US Federal Employees' to help protect or defend me, especially since I now have a Collective Convention to follow during my work for the GAO. How weird is that?" Lucas finished his explanation in complete wonderment at having any part of an institution or group on his side of things for a change.

' _How weird is that?_ ' the kid asked! Nathan's answer was another groan as he grabbed one of the pillows and put it over his face to muffle the scream of despair and anxiety he wanted to let loose. Fucking lawyers invading his precious ship! As if being invaded and violated by Shraeder and his circus sideshow of incompetent minions hadn't been enough, he now had to contend with a plague of lawyers! Damn it all to hell and back! Even the plagues in the Bible weren't as bad! The frogs and locusts could be eaten at least! And red waters in the river could be used to make colored bricks! What were they going to do with lawyers? Practice etiquette for state dinners or how to suck up to a senator? Argh!

"Lucas; go to sleep. In fact, I'm scrapping my next two or three hours to get a nap myself and then I have some poor hapless ensign to ream out in the conference room down the hallway. Get stretched out, close your eyes for some sleep; you really need it after the last three, four now, days we've had. I'll wake you up for lunch, that way you'll have the afternoon and evening to order things in preparation for the mandatory shore leave in three days.

This said, Bridger went to his desk to empty out his pockets, put his PAL unit on the charging block and took off his shoes, belt and glasses. Opening a few buttons at the top of his shirt, he waved lazily at the still sitting teen and laid himself on his bunk, fully dressed but comfortable, for a few hours of much needed mental respite.

Soon enough, the teenager yawned wide and long, then spoke out in russian a command that had the lights shut off and he also laid himself out, wrapped again in warm blankets for a long trip into the arms of Morpheus.

 **Sunday morning recriminations**

(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 12:00am (noon)**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; captain's cabin**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Lucas grumbled and moaned as he slowly climbed up from the deep, warm pit of the first truly restful sleep he had benefited from in almost a month. He batted his eyes a few times, trying to adjust to the darkness in the chamber as all the artificial lights were still off and no illumination came in from the porthole in the outer hull. Stretching and cracking a few joints in his legs and arms, the teenager rolled onto his back and sighed in deep contentment at finally having had a real night of sleep without nightmares or worse, reliving memories best forgotten where he buried them. Yawning and coughing a bit to clear his throat, he finally decided to sit on the couch then promptly stopped all movement, wondering why he should when the warm, fuzzy blankets called to him with so much friendliness. Hummm! Sleeeep…

The blasted door to the cabin opened at that very critical moment, flooding half the room in light from the fluorescent strips in the corridor, hurting his eyes and forcing him into closing his eyelids while he groaned in dismay at the sudden intrusion into what had been a perfectly good sleep-inducing darkness.

"What the bloody hell are you thinking about, trying to blind a poor kid like that?" Lucas exclaimed rather tetchily at whoever had the gumption to rouse him from torpor in such a rude way. The captain's answering laughter had him raising his whole body to a sitting position in a panic as he realized who he had just challenged; in his own cabin / office no less!

"Well hello to you too, sleeping beauty." Nathan replied amused at the poor boy's disheveled state and sleep addled mindset. He noisily dropped a stack of folders on his desk and walked towards the boy so he could sit on the other couch, right in front of the teen but with the coffee table as a comfortable separation between them. Comfortable for Lucas, that was. Nathan had no ill will towards his youngest crewmember but he remembered the conversation from earlier and how the kid had been on the verge of a panic attack from just words and hard truths that were not even threatening to him directly. And Bridger had not forgotten those either, no sirree; his call to Bill was planned for after the evening's council meeting and no later. He had already sent his old friend an email containing all that they had on general McFarlane and a warning not to go to bed before they could hash out the situation between them. He had received a response already and that conference would not be derailed, no matter what.

"So Kiddo, ready to face the day? There's paperwork aplenty for men of stout heart to face." He told his houseguest with a playful smirk. In truth, he had an idea of just how much work Lucas had waiting for him and it would not be an easy ride until the council meeting. The kid would probably spend his dinner in here, eating with one hand while typing with the other, and that's if he didn't decide that sipping weak soup through a straw to have two hands free wasn't a more efficient idea. Haaan… The things this kid did…

"Well, heu, sir… I kinda just woke up right before the door opened up, so gimmee another five, okay, and I'll be on the road." The teenager answered in a simpler, more ordinary language than he normally spoke. Nathan always thought it was amusing to hear how he sounded when he just woke up or had finished his duty rotation and was slowing down for the night compared to how grown up he sounded while on shift. What wasn't funny was the fact that the boy actually expected to be kicked out the moment his sleep period was done and not be allowed back in until the next one was due. Bridger pursed his lips in thought at that and made an impulsive decision that he hoped would not be seen badly by the young man. Given how fiercely protective of his independence and autonomous lifestyle the kid was, it was a gamble but then again, the important things in life required risk to be rewarding.

"Okay, kid, but I have something for you in the meanwhile. Since it will take a few more days to set up your cabin, probably after the shore leave by the looks of things, I got you this. Don't lose it! I don't want to have Krieg using my quarters to stash his bootlegging like a squirrel stowing nuts in a tree!" At this, he took from his shirt pocket a key with a number and logo on the roundel and threw it gently in an underhand pitch at the youth across the table. Lucas caught the flying object instinctively as if he were born to catch baseballs and looked at it interrogatively. He didn't seem to understand what he had until his mind registered the writings on the key.

"You're giving me a key to your cabin? But why?" he asked in a stunned, plaintive tone of voice. His facial expressions and tone showed Bridger that the young man in front of him had rarely, if ever, received gifts of kindness in his life. That was something that would change soon, too.

"I am giving you this for two very specific reasons; it's a privilege, not a right, and I expect you not to abuse it or let somebody in here if you are not present with them. Besides the fact it is my home, you know just how much classified materials are in the cabinets and the CPU on my desk, not to mention the master-access you built into the Gaseous Holographic Display console."

As he got a grunt of what could be passed for assent, Nathan continued. "Firstly; you haven't had a decent place to live in since you came aboard and I haven't done anything to date about it. This is my easy and sure-fire way of changing that until you do get your new quarters. After all, if it's good enough for the captain, it should be good enough for you too." Seeing the kid wore slightly less embarrassed expression than earlier and was actually looking at him instead of his feet, Nathan felt he had won a major score in the game and hoped it lasted. Lucas was not very stable right now, and with all events and people involved, he didn't think it unreasonable for the short term. He was still going to scream at Noyce to have a psychological counselor permanently affected to the ship, if only because both Lucas and himself needed it.

Bridger rubbed his hands on his uniform legs, nervous about how the kid would react to the personal overture he was about to make. "Now, the second reason is a bit more personal; I want to make certain that you have a safety buffer. I can guess that being the only 16 year old on board will not be easy at any point for you and while your work time will be governed by Laws and Protocols for the service branches, your personal life is another story. So, I thought that you could use my cabin as a sanctuary of sorts when things get too hectic or nasty and you need to regroup yourself or just crash somewhere nobody will bother you. This also has the benefit that you have better access to me, to speak with and get some external opinions or a helping hand when you can't manage by yourself anymore. There are a lot of things that the younger, and lower ranking, crew simply won't be able to help with, but I can if only because of my rank."

Nathan wanted to take Lawrence Wolenczak and Cynthia Holt and conk their heads together repeatedly until they could understand the depth of suffering and loneliness their only child had suffered. The face of complete disbelief Lucas was making as he tried to wrap his mind around the fact that someone was offering to shelter him or even help him actively without a pay check or a benefit of some sort made the old mariner want to dangle the pair of lack wits from the ship's diving rudders. It was as if the kid had been educated and trained to have a gut-deep belief that he was worthless and nobody would ever value his presence or his existence, no matter how much he worked or helped others. There was something very unhealthy and not-right going on in that family. Bully for them that Nathan was going to put his mind and resources to finding out what it was.

"Heu… I don't know what to say, sir. Nobody's ever done that for me before. I mean, even my parents wanted me to call ahead and have the servants present if I went to one of their houses without them being there. Having free, unfettered access to what was legally my own home didn't happen until I went to Stanford and bought the brownstone building where I lived."

The teen's eyes were glassy with unshed tears as he looked towards the past, six years behind. "My grand-parents on both sides were not rich but had a small amount of wealth in their names. Since both couples only had one child, they kept a close eye on what happened to their investments as they could guess it would be them that used most of it for their end-of-life care. When they saw that their children were becoming quite prosperous at a very young age, very early in their careers, they rearranged their holdings to put them into a common 'Family Foundation' type of system where the Foundation pays out maintenance checks for their health care and lodgings."

Lucas fished around under the couch to pull out his few remaining personal affairs and begun getting dressed as he completed his explanation. Nathan sat on the other couch, still as a statue, afraid that any movement or sound on his part would scare the child into silence.

"All four together, they saw that they now had a single grandchild and there wasn't going to be another one. That's when then they decided to set up some financial and legal protections for me. They emptied out and voided the existing Foundation to incorporate a new one. In it, they put me as the single mandated trustee of the foundation. As of the age of 6, they made me its sole beneficiary. Everything went to me and bypassed both parents. In truth, the moneys, buildings, portfolio of stocks and the controlling shares in local companies that I got was a bit paltry compared to Mom's law firm or Dad's consulting firm. But it was all mine. By the time I was 9 years old and all my grand-parents had died, I was in charge of my own earnings and savings. I was now a 'Man of Means and Responsibilities' as granddad Holt had said the last time I spoke with him by his hospital bed. The very day he died in his sleep while I held his hand."

Lucas pinched his lips in pain, closing his eyes and trying desperately to find a beacon or a rock to hold onto in the middle of all the torment he was drifting in. He panicked and opened his eyes, trying to place his arms defensively in front of himself as he tried to identify what touched him and why. He saw Nathan Bridger, standing next to him, with a hand on his mid-back to steady him and another on his left arm which he caught in movement to avoid being hit or pushed away. Moving his right hand upwards, Nathan placed it on the back of the boy's neck and gave him a gentle, supportive squeeze while moving his left hand from the boy's elbow to his hand so he could lace their fingers together and hold him like that, more supportively and less like a restraint or a containment grip as suggested by holding him at mid-arm.

The dam broke; emotions, feelings, fears and anxieties held at bay for a decade and a half would no longer tolerate to be kept in the dark, unseen and unfelt. The first low, chocking sounds made Nathan think the kid was experiencing a panic attack and was either hyperventilating or in the initial spasms of retching his guts out. He was only partially surprised when the first sobs burst forth, shaking the kid so bad he would have fallen on the floor if Nathan hadn't held on to him. What really angered the captain though was the silence. After the initial two or three seconds of sounds, Lucas was absolutely silent. No matter how much he shook or cried, the boy wrapped his arms around his own torso in a desperate protective self-hug and dropped in a sitting position on the couch, not really seeing anything anymore. His eyes were flooded with salty tears and he very obviously hadn't let loose of his self-control in a long time for it to hurt so much but the problem was the silence. Even in the depths of painful sobs that hurt his ribs as he heaved them out, the boy's mouth was tightly closed and not a single sound came out to indicate his distress or his pain. Even with another human in the room, Lucas Wolenczak was adrift alone in his pain and suffered in all-encompassing solitude, unwanted and uncared for.

Nathan decided it had been enough; being respectful of another's privacy and independence were all good and proper, but this was a hurt child sitting on his couch. Since he had guided Lucas to sit in the middle of the couch, he could easily sit himself on the boy's left and wrap a protective arm around his thin, wiry frame and guide him to lean against the older man's shoulder and side. The teenager was not in any way capable of comprehending his predicament and followed the simple, gentle gestures that guided him until he was laying on his side with his head on the man's lap and the rest of his bony frame spread out on the couch cushions. Bridger began humming a slow tune his wife had liked as he carded a lazy hand through the boy's long, messy hair. The sobs subsided, the gut-wrenching spasms ended and a peaceful, steady and silent breathing replaced the teen's panicked outburst.

They must have stayed that way for a half hour or so, before Lucas sat up on his place and yawned while trying to rapidly blink his eyes to get rid of the accumulated crud and leftover tears from his crisis of distress. Not that he would ever in this life or the next admit to what it had been.

Nathan placed his right hand on top of the kid's head, rubbing his scalp like a five-legged spider, and promptly huffed in laughter as he could see Lucas make a face that promised he would go to sleep if the gentle, headache-soothing massage continued any longer. Moving his hand off the kid's head, he used the index to poke the bony shoulder and rouse the boy a bit. "Time for lunch, Kiddo. Or more likely brunch as it's still very much Sunday and we're not getting out of this no matter how much we don't want to go through with it."

Obtaining only a silent but much more normal and non-panicked nod of assent, Nathan stood and offered a hand to Lucas to help him up. The kid looked at the offered hand, seeing so much more than just the simple friendly gesture. Raising his eyes towards the older man's face, Lucas locked eyes with him and then slowly, deliberately, took hold of the offered hand and squeezed it for all his weak, shallow strength could give. Nathan helped him to stand and then wrapped both arms around him, engulfing the young man in a well deserved and much needed display of affection. Acting on instincts he had never really been able to follow, Lucas buried his face in the crook of Bridger's neck and exhaled all his stress, anxiety, depression, morosity and heart-clenching pain he lived with for so long.

"It will get better, Kiddo. It will happen that there will be a Light at the end of the Storm. Every sailor knows this of Mother Sea's domain; she throws around storms and hardships, sharks and reefs, but she never, ever allows the lights from the lighthouses to be extinguished or unseen. No matter how rough the currents across your course, how stormy the passage around the reefs, at the end there is a harbor with a Light and they are waiting for you with open arms to give you shelter. Believe in this, child, and believe with all your heart as I do that you deserve this shelter and this help as much as anyone else ever has."

Gently guiding his young friend to stand straight, Nathan inspected his face and passed a gentle thumb under an eye to wipe some residue from the long bout of heavy crying he had done. Placing his hands on both his shoulders, he gave Lucas another kind, supportive squeeze and then pointed the bathroom door. "Go pass a washcloth on your face, straighten that mop on your head and we'll go to brunch together. It will do me good to have something else than dull reports to go along the chef's ever-lovable mystery meatloaf. Go on, I'll wait for you."

Lucas actually tried to make a small, simple smile that wasn't a smirk or patently false gesture of urbane politeness he normally gave Ford and Westphalen. Nathan felt his old heart soar at the sight. As the teenager went into the bathroom to wash-up and get ready for the road, Nathan began to think that maybe, just maybe, coming to this ship again might have been worth it, if only to provide help and care to this lost young soul.

 **Sunday brunch is a bust**

(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 12:47am (noon)**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; Mess hall**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

The common mess hall of the SeaQuest was about as ordinary as these installations went. Not even Nathan Bridger's genial abilities at naval architecture and innovation could create a miracle out of something as banal as waiting in line at a buffet counter. How the large hotel chains managed to make this an amazing experience was an amazing accomplishment in and of itself. However, Nathan had never been schooled in the subtle arts of hospitality and managing guests, so he based the designs on what the rest of the navy used and for the most part it worked well enough that nobody bitched beyond the usual. After all, there were only so much navy blue and drab grey steel bulkheads you could see in one day before you felt like splashing some colors around.

Most of the crewmen were sitting with the dregs of their noon-time meals, just about to go finish the second half of their daytime shift. A few were waiting in line at the buffet counter; those had a day off or had woken from a shortened night cycle and didn't want to bother going back to bed since they started their own rotation at 16:00pm.

Commander Jonathan Ford had waited until the lunch service rush was practically over to come out of his cabin and get something to eat. He might be the ship's Executive Officer and First Mate as the titles went, but right now he felt like a squiggly little pink piglet that had avoided the butcher's knife by the thickness of his hair. Passing a trembling hand over his bald head in anguish, the thought of how close he came to being killed by the oversized Mecchano toy contraption of a deranged child sent shivers down his back.

Boiling! The little bastard had actually thought that boiling alive with steam a human being was okay! And he had the guts to crow about it in public to boot! Not that Bridger was holding him back at all, either. How the hell could a kid have any moral compass or decent judgment when the adults just patted him on the head and cooed at every dumb-assery he came up with? His grand-mother would have whipped him good and hard then taken him to the church for Reverend Malone to whip his bare ass in front of the whole congregation before punting him to a christian reformatory in the depths of the swamps where nobody would have been bothered by boys yelling and crying when they got their righteously due corrections!

Ford stopped walking and tried to calm the full-body palsy that shook him as he remembered the look of angry, rabid hatred that had been on Lucas' face when he used the wrench to clank the grate and trigger a release of boiling water from the ceiling. Jonathan now had many first degree burns in the form of little blisters from having been splashed by the ebullient mist and droplets. He had rushed to his quarters at full run to strip off every last article of clothing he had worn and had in fact wept in relief when he saw that none of the burns were big enough or grave enough to have to rely on the people in the infirmary to heal himself. Westphalen was an opiniated barking hound-of-war and the rest worshipped the pasty little bugger all day. None of them would have helped him any if they had learned what happened in the Vault.

He hadn't been able to do more than recover his equilibrium, wrap a bathrobe around himself and put his wet clothes in the hamper that his door buzzer sounded. Bridger and Crocker had come already, wanting the copies of EACH and EVERY communication he had ever had with McFarlane about Lucas and his activities. He was even warned that there would be an official investigation, the JAG and NCIS would be involved, as would Naval Intelligence. If they found problems with other people who wanted to hurt or discredit Lucas by manipulating crewmen or contractors, he could expect another visit with another request for media copies.

After a half hour of agonizing delays, he finally managed to be alone again. He stripped off and verified his blisters and burn patches anew. The only good part of this was that all the damages were on the front of him and could easily be reached as long as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror to see a few awkward spots. Thankfully he had stocked up on several types of painkillers, balms, bandages and a full sized field-kit containing some scalpels, scissors, tourniquet, reusable glass syringes and other medical necessities for surviving in case of hostile conditions on or off ship.

After taking the time to towel himself dry and then apply generous amounts of aloe-vera based unguents, he had lain on his bunk, on his side, face towards the wall and then the adrenaline crash had taken him hard. He had cried himself out and dozed off for about an hour of fretful restless slumber. He woke up during a nightmare where the bastard little stain-on-the-floor had actually fully triggered the washdown defenses and stood there with a wiener stuck on a screwdriver, holding it in the jets of boiling steam, laughing like a loon and betting out loud that Ford would be done before his hot-dog was ready!

Jonathan opened his eyes, trying to remember when he had closed them and was upset to realize that he was developing ticks and nervous mannerisms that were not going to help anything if he didn't stop them right away before they became ingrained as coping mechanisms. Walking into the mess hall proper, he went to the buffet line and advanced briskly, selecting things that were on the blander side, with a lot of salad and dressing. If anybody thought he was going anywhere near the deep fried stuff they were high as kites and anyone suggesting he try the steamed white rice was gonna get decked!

The commander was almost done picking his choices when the noises in the hall went practically silent except for the scraping of utensils and chewing. Not believing his rotten luck but needing to see it, he turned around and saw his nightmare come true. Bridger and Lucas had walked in together and were heading towards the service counter. The kid wore the same clothing he had for the last four days but that surprised nobody as everyone aboard had heard about his cabin being bombed out. Bridger had changed into a fresher set of the same uniform he had worn this morning and seemed to be in a better mood than the whole ship put together. What happened to do that in the last five hours?

Ford decided to not wait around and turned back to making quicker, easier selections while also packing up some stores for the rest of the day. He now planned to stay in his cabin, buried in reports and admin until the thrice damned ship's council of tonight. They would be forced to listen to and then heap praise onto the brayings of that useless runt and look happy while doing it. The more the day went on, the more Jonathan regretted not taking the choice of honorable discharge when it was offered to him right after Stark and the return to drydock. And after the dock work was done, again the admiralty had not so subtly told him they could be generous towards him and give a very nice severance package and some truly glowing letters of reference if he bowed out gracefully. His existence was a living reminder of what Stark had come close to doing and most of the brass wanted him gone. A small minority wanted him sacked just on the principle that an officer placing hands on the captain and stopping the ship's master from acting was anathema to the oaths of service and they wanted him gone, no matter that they were just as thankful as the rest of them that he had stepped in when he did.

Ford took his tray and chose the furthest, most isolated and inhospitable table in the far back of the mess hall, in the corner between the bulkhead and outer hull. Since it was a two-seater he hoped not to attract attention or worse, self-invited guests. His planning paid off as Bridger and Runt went to sit at the opposite of him, next to the same bulkhead but in the corner of the wall that separates the mess hall from the internal corridor. Making certain to keep his head down and eat quietly, Ford began mulling actively the pros and cons of asking for either a transfer or a release from service. He knew enough about the politics of the Pentagon and the UEO executive cabinet to know that either would be granted with much public crying and wailing while they jettisoned him out of the navy by the method of attaching him to an ICBM and launching his poor black hide into space.

A half hour later, after eating through his large but simplistic meal of chef's salad with mixed cold meats, garlic bread and cheese wedges, Ford packed up the containers for his reserves and discretely walked out the mess hall while Bridger and Bastard were distracted by Kathy making a fuss about her misappropriated wrench and having to fill out recovery forms at the security office to have it returned to her loving care. The woman had actually said "returned my baby to his mama's loving bosom" to be exact! Ford shook his head in dismay, realizing that a week ago he would have thought it funny like in a sci-fi movie where the engineer is practically married to his engines, but now, after the last four days, he saw it for what it was. This ship, the SeaQuest, was rotten. There was something in it that took ordinary people and warped their values, twisted their morals and deformed their souls until they were no longer close enough to the norms of society to still be called human.

His mind was made up; he was asking for a discharge and putting the paperwork in tonight at council.

Fuck the USA, NATO and the UEO! If this was the type of atmosphere and working climate they wanted to maintain, if these were the types of people they wanted in their ships and bases, then he wanted no truck with them anymore. There were plenty of remote isolated islands to live by his lonesome and plenty of small fishing and exploration outfits that needed experienced mariners. He would trust Mother Sea to hold her child and provide for him. But not in the Navy, not ever again.

 **Sunday: isn't it supposed to be the one guaranteed day off?**

(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 18:43pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; captain's cabin**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Benjamin Krieg, lieutenant junior grade, quartermaster and morale officer, had to bite the knuckles of his fist to keep from laughing out loud at the sight in front of him. Lucas in a panic was amusing to no ends.

The poor kid had been contentedly typing along at a cruising speed of some 200 words a minute on some report or another while spewing a constant stream of some eastern european language Ben didn't understand but the CPU voice controllers in the room obviously did as each word he spoke triggered reactions across the entire network. He even had that small, shy smile that he got when things were going well, in silence, meaning that nobody was yelling at him for something that was usually the fault of poorly designed equipments or badly programmed software not done or installed by him.

Then he had seen Krieg in his peripheral view, had looked at the clock on the lower corner of his screen and promptly turned several shades of sickened green to make a mackerel jealous. The council was in less than a half hour and he was barely done! Nothing was in proper form, the spell-checks weren't done and some data sheets hadn't received external validation yet! Argh! He was D-E-A-D when the captain saw that he had bummed around all afternoon instead of working like he should have!

The fact that said captain had been sat at his own desk ploughing through his own pile of the Eternal Enemy of Humanity (Paper-Work; it deserved the capitals in the expressions, believe you me) and had in fact seen Lucas, sat on the floor with the couch as a backrest, working away non-stop for the last five hours solid. The memory never made it passed the poor kid's exaggerated sense of guilt and self loathing for not performing as a department head should have. Even when the older man actually sat next to the kid, on the couch though since his back was acting up, and placed a hand on his shoulder to comfort him and reassure him that his performance was in fact much better than anybody else aboard had been to date, the young man was still out of sorts and close to a panic attack. Man! Even Tim O'Neil with his ultra-orthodox catholic childhood wasn't as bad at guilt-tripping himself!

Ben decide to use levity to maneuver the kid into changing gears while the captain packed up and went to the Ward Room across the hall where the ship's council was held each week. The officer signaled with his hands that he was going to call some food in as Lucas had in fact skipped his dinner altogether in favor of guzzling a retail-brand bottle of proteinated milkshake that could serve as replacement for a meal. Nathan knew damn well the absolute tastelessness of those Gawd-awful things as he had to consume some after a short stay in the hospital on the mainland after a motorcycle accident. Unfortunately the older man thought ruefully, he hadn't been drunk at the time and so had felt the bloody milkshake go down his gullet in all its disgusting medicated glory each time they fed him. Better an intravenous line full of raw molecules in his humble but very experimented opinion.

Krieg nodded at his passing superior, chipper like a canary in the morning sunlight even at this hour of the early evening. Nathan decided to save his sanity and not ask what exactly Krieg had been doing all day to make him so happy. Some things the ship's master just had to ignore if he wanted to remain stable enough to float the boat to the right port. Krieg's shenanigans were not in any ways conducive to such stability so he made a herculean effort to curb his innate curiosity and walk out before the fatidic catastrophe happened and he had no choice but to get involved. Bridger just hoped Lucas was now preoccupied enough by his three different jobs to dodge out of whatever scheme Benjamin had cooked up. And if it happened on shore leave then he would deal with it on their return, not before.

After the door closed and they were alone, Krieg gave his teenaged friend a kind, brotherly smile and a gentle pat on the back, leaving his hand on the kid's mid-back to help comfort him when he saw the mournful expression on his face was still there.

"Haaan, come on runt, lets get this sorted out so you can move it across the hall and wow all of us old fogies with your cybernetic magic show. After the last four days we had, we could all use some comedy relief." Ben said playfully as he tried to take the laptop from the young man's lap and close it for transport.

Lucas froze in mid tug-of-war over his precious portable station and turned a weary face towards one of the few adults aboard he thought were his friends. At least he thought he was. Now he wasn't sure. "What did you just call me? The comedy relief? Do I look like I'm clowning around here? Do I look like I'm having any sorts of fun? Well for your information, quartermaster Krieg, this amusing comedy that relieves you so almost killed a man this morning because he was stupid enough to go where he didn't have clearance to be! So I spent part of the day re-scaling the anti-intruder measures and refining the detection grid to make certain it doesn't trigger on some hapless twit in search of a dark nook to puff a toke on his coffee break! I am late in my work and reports, in taking over the two departments because Oh, yeah! There wasn't anybody assigned to them even part-time until I came along and got harnessed to them like a bloody fucking mule fresh off the farm! I have spent the last three whole weeks playing catch-up and damage control because the numbnuts in NCQ and DC haven't a freaking clue how to run a ship other than you need the money they're trying to keep for their parties and mistresses! So excuse me, kind sir, if I think your mis-appreciation of my work and social situation sucks an entire factory of damned hairless balls and the flaccid shapeless sacks they came in with!"

Lucas was heaving great angry breaths, face pinched and lips pursed like a chicken's rear hole as Ben's mother would have said while cackling at the poor kid. Benjamin decided that she would be right; making that particular face really did look funny on him! "So, do you feel better now that you got that off your chest?" The adult asked gently, letting go of the computer and sitting on the coffee table so as to look the young man in the face as they spoke.

"No." Lucas answered blithely. "I still almost killed a guy by our common incompetence today and I still haven't talked with him about it. Not that I would blame him if he decked me just for existing at this point."

Ben made a funny little noise with his mouth as he was wont of doing when he thought real hard and asked the real question behind his adolescent friend's depressive mood. "Are you angry because of the late work others piled on you and blamed you for the delays? Is it because Ford was his usual mule headed asinine self and tried again to find a reason to shame you publicly? Or was it because after all the shite of the last three weeks you finally lost control of your emotions enough to actually admit out loud that you wished he had boiled in that trap and then made a clear threat to that effect?"

The teenager balked badly at his friend's question. "I refuse to answer that. In fact, I refuse to dignify the question by admitting that you asked it at all. As for losing control, why don't you try to do all of the FOUR jobs that I have for just a week and see how you like it. Last time I checked, you had trouble managing by yourself the only one job you do have so don't try to comment on my management or emotional status. If you're going to try your hand at being the mature, reliable adult that I can lean on in troubled times, then at least try to use a credible situation for it!"

Ben winced in pained surprise at just how deeply upset and nasty that reply had been. He knew that Lucas had a temper and worked hard all day to keep it in check. Contrarily to everybody who thought the kid was a nice little brother that they could joke around with and annoy in good jest, Ben had seen quite a few situations where somebody had walked away with their manhood and self-esteem torn to shreds. Lucas would never go looking for someone to harm or take his anger out on, but watch out if you were dumb enough to think he was your punching bag or whipping boy. He fought back dirty and, as Shraeder and company had found out, didn't back down from dirtying his hands to get his message across to all comers.

The older man passed a weary hand through his hair and tried to come at the situation from a different angle and hoped he was more diplomatic this time around. "Look bro, I don't think that anybody on board at this time could do the things that you do, no in quality and no even just in quantity. It wasn't my intent to say something to the effect that you were bellyaching for no reason. If anything, I was trying to et you to pull your head out of the fog bank you're lost in and see that YOU are asking way too much of yourself. You can't handle that much all alone. You can't process that much stress by your lonesome and not have some sort of emotional spillover to the activities and jobs you do. You need help and what I am trying to say is that it's okay to say so. Its okay if you didn't do everything perfectly or at all in the few days you had since nobody alive, even our best veterans, could have. Bridger was right; you are demanding from yourself too much performance at too high a standard and you'll burn out soon if you don't revise and re-scale your schedule and efforts."

Closing his eyes and leaning back against the sofa as a backrest, Lucas hummed lowly, agreeing with everything his older friend had said. But that would mean new staff and crewmen, which needed budgeting money for them and there was the crux of the trouble; the ship's budget for the year was already strained by the incidents they had suffered in the first two months of operation. There was no more monetary help to be had and they could even be looking at a shortened tour if the expenses and catastrophes kept coming at this rate. The GAO had sent him a memo to the effect that several thinking heads not only in DC and NCQ but also in Ottawa, Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and several more capitals of the member states of the UEO were pulling the panic lever already. This would not end well.

They had been stewing in contemplative silence for a minute or so when someone knocked on the door and opened it without being told. Commander Ford stepped in just enough to see how they were set up and scowl even more deeply. Gazing hatefully at Lucas he barked out "The council starts in three minutes. But, knowing Bridger, we'll no doubt wait until you grace us with your august presences. Don't bother stressing yourselves going fast, we'll be there when you decide to come in." On that, he turned around and closed the door behind his retreating form.

Exchanging barely a passing glance, the two friends worked quickly to pull together the paper folios and computer to move across the hall at flanking speed. No need to make anyone look at this more weirdly than they would already.


	3. THE STORM IS HERE

**SeaQuest**

This story takes place in season 1, just after the SeaQuest was violently boarded and taken over by Colonel Shraeder and his mercenaries. I will be modifying several elements of that episode to fit with the fic, notably that there were more mercs in the transport, they were more violent and Lucas had been significantly more reactive and aggressive when helping to safeguard the ship and crew. The modifications to the canon of the episode will be minor and showed as flashbacks or during discussion between crew members.

Read the beginning of Chapter 1 for the full disclaimer and notes.

*** A message of thanks for Nessa30 who has logged on as follower of this story.

 **DURA LEX, SED LEX**

 **The Law may be hard, but it is The Law**

 **THIRD CHAPTER; THE STORM IS HERE**

 **Sunday evening: the ship's council**

(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 19:00pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; ward room**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Nathan sat in his chair at the head of the table; a cupboard the full width of the room and the flag of the UEO Alliance high on the wall were behind him. The council was almost assembled in full, missing only two people now. The officers sat in their usual order starting at his left hand; Ford, Hitchcock, Crocker, O'Neil and Ortiz. At his right hand would be Westphalen, Levine, Krieg, Lucas and Shan. He honestly would have preferred to keep Lucas closer to himself on normal days and even more now but the teenager was such a fiercely independent person that even asking could cause an explosion. Well, at least mentally it would be explosive. The worse the boy ever really did was to raise his voice for a few minutes during a rant and then promptly apologize for acting unprofessionally. He didn't even swear a quarter of the volume his best adult officers did and still apologized for it. Nathan pursed his lips in thought, wondering yet again about the many mysteries of Lucas Wolenczak and, as if the Universe were teasing him, the boy in question came through the door dragging Benjamin behind him.

The moment the door was sealed and everyone was in place, Nathan began the doldrum routine of going through each and every department, starting from the top with Ford to end with the ship's bosun Marcus Shan for the complementary follow-ups and bridge efficiency stats. Just as Jonathan was finishing a report so thin and dry as to be called a cracker, someone knocked on the door. Shan opened it and a female yeoman came in to place a pair of serving trays on the table along a thermal satchel containing some chilled fruit juice bottles. The woman saluted the captain and left silently. Nathan gestured for everyone to serve themselves.

"All of us have had a hectic day, trying to catch up to our admin, avoid delays in current plans and we still have not finished repairing the damages from Shraeder's little romp amongst our systems. So, if any of you need a little something, don't hesitate. Just don't hand in your homework with crumbs or stains or I'll have to take points off your marks for poor presentation." He joked at them as he grabbed a ham and cheese sandwich made with salted butter and Dijon mustard. The vinegary taste would help wake him up a bit. Half the officers gratefully took something as they had cut their dinners short to be present on time and still have enough of their jobs done to be comfortable with the results. Bridger was glad to see Lucas take a pair of sandwiches and some raw vegetables with cesar dip. The natural fruit juice he chose would do him more good than the large thermal tankard of coffee that he had walked in with. When had he had time to fill up that monster, anyways?

Once everyone that had picked some food had a few bites in them, he signaled to Ford to complete his report or pass Kathy the pole. Jonathan was stone-faced this evening and Nathan could understand the reasons why without even trying. There were small blisters visible on his face and forearms where his clothes didn't reach since he had rolled his shirt sleeves up to his elbows. The discoloration from salves was as easy to detect as the smell of aloe ointment in the air. That could explain why his teenaged worker looked so ill all of a sudden; he had finally seen the commander's condition and started asking himself some serious questions that really should have been asked this very morning.

The Ex-O looked around the table, taking in the calm, relaxed atmosphere amongst the officers and civilians and realized for the first time just how out of place he was in this group. It firmed up his decision and so he took a folio of sheets out of his binder and passed them to his commanding officer right now instead of after the meeting as he had thought of doing.

"With respect to the necessities of the ship, sir, I am submitting my request for honorable discharge from the UEO and the US Navy. I have come to see that after the recent events of the last two years, from the Stark incident onwards, that I was simply hanging on to the Navy out of habit, not because I still wanted to be in the service. Consequently, I have written the appropriate forms and I am submitting them for processing. I would appreciate if this could be done within the next 20 to 30 days so I could move on before we are stuck in the administrative cycle for the tour's first quarter."

There was dead silence around the table, and several were looking at the man without being able to comprehend where this came from. Kathy was pale, glancing from Bridger to Lucas to Ford in rapid cycle. The teenager was looking over O'Neil's head with a glassy eyed expression, not responding to subtle nudges from Shan. Crocker palmed his face, grumbling oaths to himself but nothing truly coherent. Bridger took the folio, leafed through it to get a feel of the reasons behind the decision, although he had about three quarters of it on the nose just by gut instinct. The others were clueless and even Kristen Westphalen was quite taken aback by the suddenness of the decision.

The older officer set the folio aside, on the top of his priority cases pile and then joined his hands on top of the table before himself. "Is there anything else commander?"

His simple question seemed to kill the mood and tell people clearly that this was not the place or time to discuss the new situation. Later, in private or at another full meeting after the shore leave had done them a world of good, but not now.

Following a negative from Ford, Kathy swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat and unraveled her lengthy report with all the many physical damages that the mercenaries had done to a lot of secondary and tertiary systems. At least, they had enough military training to not go around shooting the outer hull or throw grenades into the air recyclers. What they did do however was tear the ship apart to find Lucas and the dozen people that had been supposed to leave with the last MR-class shuttle just before the hull-siphon tests began. As such, they did a lot of superficial destruction like tearing safety grates off vents or ripping pipes to access network cables. They moved some heavy equipment cabinetry in the maintenance bunkers and spilled the contents without a care, thus damaging precious tools and parts. Somehow, they managed to fry the control panel for the refrigeration unit in the galley's pantry thus forcing the crew to eat through a lot of fish and chicken all at once or it would just go to waste. At least, it wasn't the main food bunkers; those would have been hard to recover from. And of course, they had managed to damage the parking silo their shuttle was in when the last three mercs had tried to run for it after seeing the live broadcast of Lucas ripping Shraeder's head off and then putting four shots into Lance Bowman from close enough to be soiled by the blood spatter.

When the Lt-commander was done, it was Crocker who took over with the security status, including the all around popular report on the wait for the NCIS and JAG to get here and process them so they could have those well deserved and much needed five days off ashore. The badges should be there by nightfall this very day and the physicals would be done tomorrow on Monday so that the leaves could all start on the morning the day after that, on Tuesday the 11th.

After the rotund security chief had finished, some routine reports from both comms and sensors were passed over quickly as Shraeder hadn't had the equipment or desire to play around with the WSKRS or the sensors. Small mercies for all of them as the ship could have been blinded without them.

Nathan signaled for a short ten minute break to refill on food and drinks as he actually had a sudden craving for those veggies and dip with another sandwich. While he had been despondent about his teenaged houseguest's choice of dinner item, he wouldn't be telling you what he himself had eaten either. The choice had been made with efficient ease of one-handed consumption in mind, not taste or nutrition as the deciding factor. He had put something in his stomach to avoid having a tension migraine but that wasn't helping him anymore. Each report to date had been very concise but somewhat depleted of the regular business the ship had to wade through on normal weeks. He could well guess that those things had simply not been calculated or put to proper form for presentation and therefore had been absconded from the reports altogether until the meeting of next week, after shore leave.

After the officers were all attentive again, it was doctor Westphalen's turn to report. The pile of folios sat by her left elbow looked intimidating for the rest of the council members. The mature woman spoke in her refined British upper-London accent. She was a mental heavyweight and a medical summit in her own right; nobody would dare say she hadn't earned her place aboard as chief of medical services unless they were crass or ignorant.

"Well, now. I have assembled the preliminary results for the emergency care that was dispensed to all crew and staff during the last four days in relation to colonel Shraeder's most deleterious incursion into our affairs. We were rather quite lucky to not have suffered any direct fatalities on our side of the trenches during the event as there were several stunts with the maglev maintenance tunnel and the ventilation ducts that should not be repeated, if certain persons value their continued good health." Kristen spoke in slow words, her tone made more menacing by the deliberate intonations and choice of expressions. She was most displeased by the number of hair-raising stunts the people had gone through to finally expel the mercenaries and would much rather such things not happen again under her tenure. It was bad enough being an accomplice in creating a child-soldier; she would not participate in further barbarity if she could make them avoid it at all.

"We still have several enlisted crewmen in the infirmary convalescence ward recovering from small mishaps encountered during the rather rushed repairs throughout the ship. A few of the mercenaries left improvised booby traps behind them when they felt their cause was lost and those have actually claimed three very grave injuries: 1 civilian contractor and 2 officers. All were caught separately and all happened in the science offices around sea-deck. These will recover in two to four months of hospitalization which I recommend be done off ship to speed the recovery process. There was only one fatality to deplore. Shraeder's men placed a diminutive bomb in one of main engineering's control consoles and it exploded when the enlisted man in charge of verifying the panel opened it to check the electronics inside. He was actually killed by shrapnel shredding his entire neck and lower face, especially both carotids. He bled out in less than 60 seconds but it was not the bomb's explosion itself that was fatal. The last batch of tests we are processing is for Lucas to rule out blood contamination. Since he was in close proximity to several foreign people when they died rather spectacularly gory ends, he was consequently spattered quite liberally by the fluids disbursed from their corpses. We need to ascertain that none of them had blood-borne pathogens to transmit via hepatic contact. We should know tomorrow by noon at the latest if the cultures indicate any precursor signals to that effect. My conclusion is that barring a few clear cases, everyone should recover within the week and be physically fine right after the shore leave we are forced to take."

A few people around the table winced at the woman's rather impolitic manner of saying out loud that Lucas had basically torn to shreds five living men with hard-contact weaponry during the invasion. And nobody would forget the scene captured by the cameras in the walk-in pantry next to the galley of the main mess hall. Some things aught not be done with tableware, especially not near foodstuffs. And that was separately from the dozen he had gassed to death in varied rooms using improvised indirect methods. The doctor's words though, brought home the reality that Lucas was still paying the price of his survival and was not out of the woods. There were biological risks still to be accounted and then the psychological impacts on the poor kid's mind were not even analyzed yet.

Captain Bridger pursed his lips to keep from saying something rather testy at the blatantly challenging report the doctor had made public. She disagreed with having the teenager aboard for a host of reasons, many of which Nathan would have agreed with if it hadn't been the kid's choice to come. Lucas was here by a free choice of his own; he was not press-ganged like Kristen believed. And he had not been threatened to be aboard nor told to become a soldier or he would be punished until he did. Nathan sympathized with many of her positions but unfortunately, some of her opinions were just that and not backed by facts. It would all come to a brutal head when the GAO people arrived and started speaking with Lawrence's lawyers in a week.

The reports following Westphalen's were far less controversial; Levine simply reported delays in almost 90% of current projects and specified which three had been derailed by their scientists being injured to the point of long term hospitalization.

Krieg mentioned the damaged pantry freezer and the lost food, damages to several parts cabinets and one bunker in the ship's bowels that had gotten the attention of the mercs. It was the locker holding the alcohol that crewmen were allocated for personal consumption. In a rather controversial departure from standard US Navy regs, the UEO had adopted a more European attitude towards alcoholic drinks and allowed beer and wine to be served in all its facilities and ships along the lunch and dinner meals. It was strictly controlled and drunkenness policies with a minimum drinking age of 18 years old were applied without fail to everyone, regardless of rank or importance.

Unfortunately, this often led to a certain group of hardcore ageist troublemakers, barely 18 years old themselves, trying to goad Lucas into a fit of rage by drinking at his face in public at each chance they could find. What it really accomplished was to make them look like the childish idiots they were, not the powerful ' _of age to drink_ ' adults they bragged about being. The most damning thing for them was that Lucas had one of the cleanest lifestyles on board and was not interested in alcohol or drugs, if you disregarded his worrying caffeine intake or his teenaged sweet tooth for chocolate. But were those really so bad?

Shan exposed his report next, the contents rather light and easily understood. The bridge was at 70% efficiency due to many electrical and cybernetic troubles still not solved thus forcing the back-up command consoles in main engineering to take up the relay. Unfortunately, it was the very same consoles which had been trapped with a bomb thus M-E could only take up around 30% of the job-load and command functions it should have. Instead of acting as a full emergency bridge, they acted as a bent crutch to someone needing a wheelchair. It wasn't Shan's fault, nor Hitchcock's, just the luck of the draw from Shraeder's servants being ridiculously imbecilic in their actions against the ship's vital systems.

Lucas was the last to deposit his report to the council. He had kept the entire paper printout in is work satchel beside his chair and waited for his turn. He hummed a bit before garnering his courage and pulled up his bag to take out the folio and hand it to the captain. The pile of paper was astounding for somebody who had been short on time, spent half a day asleep and had no subordinates to help him with any preparatory work product. The massive three inch thick plate of paper actually scared Bridger into wondering if he had enough time before the end of the tour to read all of that, let alone understand any of the contents.

"Well, heu, sir, that's the part of the report that's ready for the council's attention. I wasn't able to finish everything as you well know that I was named into several jobs all at once and haven't had the time or resources to do a complete, functional take-over of each department assigned to me yet. The lack of manpower as also not helped. The fact that nobody had in fact held the postings at all before me meant that I was basically doing the start-up sequence that all other departments had undergone at the drydock two months ago while I got saddled with that procedure on top of bringing the entire organization up to functionality. Not up to codes, heu, no that's not gonna happen any time soon if I'm alone to do it all, but functionality could be maintained to some degree. If I don't get shot, poisoned or bombed out again. Maybe. I honestly hope we don't have another conniption in the servers or it's gonna be hell to get anything done in any sector around sea-deck for the foreseeable future."

The poor young man was babbling rather badly at this point from the stresses of all he had to do and yet it wasn't getting done, no matter how much he tried and worked. Bridger knew it would have to be adjusted but unless they got extra crewmen, Lucas was it and they would have to accept his best performance as it was, without blaming him for the limited results as it was not his decision to limit money, resources and manpower to those areas. Making a gesture at the paper pile, the captain encouraged the teen to verbalize the report for everybody, otherwise no one would bother to read it, even the sections about their own departments.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, the boy visibly switched mental gears and ordered his thoughts to be concise and palatable for the people in the room. He was hyper-aware of Ford's rampant dislike and Westphalen was just waiting for a slip to declare him medically unfit to serve so she could punt him back to America and jail him in a hospice for mentally unstable youths of some sort.

"All right, the report is split in four main sections. First, the cybernetic status of the entire ship with breakdown per physical sector and management departments. Second, the Mammal engineering status. Third the specific maintenance, R & D and manufacturing reports for the Cybernetic & Computational Analysis Department. Finally, fourth is the status of the scientific research and development projects that I was supposed to have going around sea-deck if I had the office and permanent work station that I am supposed to have set aside for me and that my family is paying a sizeable rent for."

Lucas chewed at his lower lip in angry anxiety. "As I do not have those, most of the projects planned are not, in fact, under way and will not be as they are now out of schedule and past their reporting dates already. They couldn't be put back on schedule anyways as I have no resources to work with; no free time left to allocate those projects; and no assistants to watch the projects and manage the equipments for me when I am working at all the other things that were piled on me as very urgently important priorities."

The teen made a constipated face: "This means of course that the multiple contracts between me, my father, the UEO Navy and the US Navy are in severe multilateral breach - on the ship's part - and will thus draw penalties and compensations as stipulated in the articles of the contracts. I have four different jobs under my name as things are, and not a single soul aboard that helps me with them unless the boat is about to sink if results in one of them are not forthcoming immediately as the captain asks for said results. Otherwise, I am ignored and shunted to the side as a burdensome deadweight that is in the way of everybody else."

Pushing out an angry exhale through the nose, the boy finished the preliminaries of his report. "The report's statistics show clearly what I could not even try to hide unless I thought the UEO admirals are all blind from birth. And given that my contracts for R & D also implicate several big-name civilian companies, the investigations into what happened to their money when the results paid for do not materialize will not be hidden or passed aside as just bad luck. People are already asking questions to which I can't give any honest answers, or even dishonest ones that could look realistic. There's a storm coming. People aground are angry, they are mad with rage and they are coming to see for themselves what happened that the entire system collapsed in on itself like this. And I can't help you with any of it anymore."

Bridger was about to ask Lucas for the particulars of just what the bloody hell happened for all this mess to explode like that when the bridge called on the ward room's intercom. – Beep! – "Sir! The shuttle carrying the NCIS medics and criminalistics team as well as the JAG lawyers is approaching off our port side. They request docking procedures. Over."

Nathan palmed his face slowly and miserably. This night just wasn't going to get any better.

 **Sunday evening: Thoughtful interlude**

 _(_ _Leon Lieffijn - Choices_ _)_

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 21:00pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; Captain's cabin**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Nathan Bridger was not happy, no he was not. There was no way in all the levels of Hell Everburning that this was not somehow his fault, and by extension the entire ship's council along with him. Lucas had been overburdened from the very start before they even left drydock. It started four months ago or so, when he first came aboard, 2 months before Nathan was present to act as a buffer between the kid and the more intolerant elements aboard. Some people didn't want to believe anything about Lucas being present by his own choice.

There was a group of hardcore bigots, possibly religious nutcases or pedophiles it wasn't clear, that insisted in peddling the rumor that he was a discipline problem, a dangerous rebellious delinquent, and had been obliged by his father to choose between the navy or a private christian juvenile jail. They said that he had chosen the ship to avoid the many richly deserved whippings of his bare ass he had earned and it was the crew's duty to inflict those beatings as often and as harshly as possible before he turned 18 and could sue his father to get off the boat and away from his ' _righteous correctors_ '.

Since Lucas had actually defended himself a against such people to the point of sending a few to the hospital and forcing two to quit outright rather than explain their grave maiming injuries to a board of inquiry, Nathan could tell the first two months aboard had been hellish for the teen. Many of these bastards thought themselves fine upstanding citizens simply because they waved around a book of 2,000 year old lies and peasants' anecdotes. In fact, they were just exploitative lazy bums who wanted Lucas to do their jobs for them. They thought that as great and mighty exalted adults they should be sleeping or playing when Lucas was hard at work doing their tasks. On top of that, he should then hand over the paycheck to them as they believed that minors had no right to have any money independent of adult authority anyways. They had tried to enslave Lucas and attempted to beat him into silence as well. The captain had not heard anything from those events but there should have been investigations and reports. Even when he asked aboard ship or at the UEO executive building, nothing was coming back and he had to talk with Bill about those circumstances as it smelled like a massive cover up in progress.

Well, the NCIS and GAO would be going through his boat with a lice comb and report **EVERYTHING** to his attention. Several people would find themselves heading for an article 32 hearing and a general court martial afterwards. Charges of hazing, harassment, defamation, criminal libel, assault, threats with weapons as well as dereliction of duty, abandoning post during work shift, logging false hours, attempt to hijack the pay of another worker, damages to classified projects and equipments and many, many others would be coming down the pipes at those pieces of filth. And Bridger couldn't find more deserving people to whom it could happen. They earned it in full by disgracing the uniform, themselves and threatening the welfare and emotional surety of the most amiable, amenable worker on board.

The old mariner tapped an impatient finger on the paper version of the teenager's report, all 400 pages of it. Without the many annexes and supplemental research folios, that is. Those added about another 1,000 pages easily. Nathan rubbed his forehead, wondering honestly if he would ever get to read the thing passed the first chapter. Probably not. An errant thought went around his mind and he wondered if he could get the kid to make him an audio-book version to listen to when in the shower or eating.

 _(_ _Nightcall - Stuck In Dreams_ _)_

Raising his eyes from his desk, he looked at the forlorn, despondant blond haired kid situated yet again on his couch. He sat with his legs elongated, sock-feet propped up on the coffee table again with his laptop workstation held on his thighs, typing away at his usual blinding speed. After the abrupt disbanding of the council and retreating to the silence of the cabin, Lucas had asked Nathan when and where had Ford gotten treatment for his burns. The captain didn't think anybody had helped him and said so. He didn't know if the commander had asked anybody but he doubted it since Jonathan had been at odds with many in the crew from the first moment Bridger had been aboard. And with the incident which led to the burns, well the older officer was pretty sure Ford felt he wouldn't get any help anyways so never asked.

This led to a very sulky, moody teenager who buried himself into his cybernetic world and Nathan didn't fault him as the mood swing wasn't about wanting something outside of his age's rights or childish. Not that Lucas ever did those things anyways. It's just that as teen angst went, this particular bout was actually justified, not self-centered or immature. Which just made Nathan feel even more like a crud for not insisting this morning, when he saw Ford for the copies of the films and email about McFarlane's actual orders and influence on events.

The older man looked at the clock mounted on the desk, an old style analog with springs that needed coiled every 48 hours but was more reliable than most digital systems aboard. The 21:07pm meant that in about an hour he had a video meeting with Billy about a certain general's end-of-career and possible removal from humanity. Given the rather sensitive nature of the conversation, he preferred to have it in his cabin with all systems closed and locked for the night. The problem of course was how to make his non-paying tenant leave without creating an emotional mess to clean up later on.

The situation resolved itself when Lucas spoke up in Russian ( _where did he learn that anyways?_ ) and started another ship-wide reaction across all systems. After about 5 minutes of typing almost lazily down to just 70 words a minute instead of the 200+ he normally did, the teen sat up straighter and looked at Bridger directly in his eyes with unreadable emotions flittering in his own. What now?

 _(_ _Audiomachine - A New Age_ _)_

Nathan raised his coffee mug to his lips slowly, watching the teenager as he went through the closing routine for his unholy portable workstation ( _NOT a laptop captain! T's not a toy!_ ) securing the contents from illicit access. Bridger always got chills down his spine when he thought of what exactly the pale skinned child had built into that infernal torture device.

The thing was an industrial-grade jointed frame based on a 21-inch wide touch screen with a solid keyboard, two little colored trackballs, with dual game controllers & dual folding joysticks integrated around the extra-large central touchpad. It had a hard-wired electronic pen and an inert stylus that both slotted into slim compartments in the top rim of the monitor. It had actual fingerprint, facial and voiceprint recognition systems and software's integrated discretely into the high quality 10mm wide 25,000 mega pixel camera fix-mounted above the screen. The machine would open its trove of malice only for Lucas and no one else in the world. The finger, face and voice scans were hardwired into the circuit board via the BIOS, Clock, FLASH-type solid-state data storage stacks and all network access control chipsets. Any activity on or around the machine initiated a scan to validate the person's right to use the system. It was the most secure portable console on board and the contents was well out of reach of anybody but Lucas himself.

The entire case was charcoal grey; no decals, imagery or any sign whatsoever of whom it belonged to. It was perfectly anonymous and looked a bit old, like from five or seven years ago. The circuits inside and the software however had all been custom designed, crafted and assembled by Lucas himself less than five months ago without any external help or supervision. He hadn't needed any anyways and his product was better than what the CIA or Navy would have supplied if Nathan asked formally.

It was a nightmare with an extension cord and an isotopic battery supplied by NASA that he honestly didn't understand fully and was glad for that small mercy. Nathan was accounted a scientific genius in his own right, although he himself thought the term 'visionary' was much more honest and accurate. Real genius wore denim and a checkered flannel shirt right ten feet in front of him. And with the stuff held in that portable station, Lucas could prove his genius very helpfully or truly nastily, depending on how you treated him.

 _(Two Steps From Hell – Never Back Down)_

Nathan would not touch that laptop without permission ever again. He tried, once, in the first week he was aboard, just after coming back from hunting Madeleine Stark. He wasn't used to things, to people around him all day, and had lost many of the habits needed to relate with others while isolated on his island. One of the things he forgot but re-learned again real fast was that all people, including children and teenagers, have fundamental rights as human beings and going around with a chip on his shoulder did not make him immune from the Law or having to give respect where it was due. He had an argument with Lucas. More like one-sided bitching on his part. The kid was just the convenient lighting rod in reach for his distemper to lash out at.

The teen was trying desperately to explain politely that what Nathan asked could not be done by the boy because he didn't have the tools, the access level for the data or the secure space to work on such sensitive classified materials. Bridger got miffed at being refused and remembered anonymous comments in the back of his mind about the boy being a discipline problem that needed to be dealt with strongly. So, he let himself go to a rant and tried to flash his age, adult power, military badge and station as captain to scare the kid into obedience despite the impossibility of the situation.

 **THAT** had been a capital mistake if any ever was. Because of false information, lack of sleep, his mismanaged temper and a complete incomprehension of the situation, Nathan had gotten angry and tried to scare Lucas into immediate subservient compliance. It backfired completely and poisoned their relationship to this day. He could still see some of the dregs of that fight in their conversations or how Lucas responded to his presence in stressful situations.

 _(Audiomachine - When It All Falls Down)_

The old mariner had acted as if he was talking to his son Robert, an average, **defenseless** ordinary kid, in his room at home; not a highly qualified civilian worker aboard a warship. He had walked around the teen's glorified pipe locker of a cabin and moved things, replaced others differently, made comments about the mess and then pushed stuff to the floor to make the mess he had accused the kid of having. He was acting like a dumb cock-driven jock strutting around the schoolyard. The teenager had stayed silent and still as a statue but his eyes spoke clearly of his contempt and challenge against the older man; the big mighty adult in charge as Nathan thought he was at that time.

Enraged at the lack of fear or any reaction in fact, he told Lucas he was giving him a good long grounding of no computer, games, media or even phone calls for a week. Bridger even barred him from accessing the ship's systems, saying contemptuously that since the child was so limited in his usefulness when asked a simple job, then he didn't need all that access and thus it was revoked by the authority of **HIM** , the powerful, authoritative adult. Lucas actually smirked evilly at him and crossed his arms over his chest, every inch of his light wiry frame screaming a challenge at Bridger.

Incensed, the older man tried to lift up the laptop to seize it from the teen. He wanted to impose on him the shame and humiliation of forcing him to beg to retrieve what was known publicly to be his private property, not the UEO's. He would take it anyways, despite being private property, and put the device in his cabin until he saw fit to hand it back, if ever. In his frame of mind at that moment, Nathan thought it was far too complicated and expensive a device for an underaged child to have as his own. Also, he planned to sift through the machine for porn, immoral contents and games rated above his age. Then he would call Lucas to the bridge to ream him out in public and impose further punishments for those delinquencies. The kid would learn the vital, crucial importance of obedience towards all adults in society before the month was out, Nathan swore it to himself.

Bridger had been having a full-on paternalistic, adultist, mental melt-down and he was venting his spleen on the poor kid who had honestly been trying to explain the situation for real. When he moved the laptop, the securities activated to check who was moving the station around. Upon detecting the hands and face of an unauthorized person, the device defended itself with full force. Yes, it **DEFENDED** itself with **FORCE**. The machine's frame weighs 10 pounds for a reason; the large monitor and several physically and digitally separated FLASH data stacks amount for a lot. The electric inverters, capacitors and **super-conductive polymer-alloy case** are not light either. And yes, Lucas had in fact just copied the look of the case. He had manufactured it himself at Stanford as part of his master's degree when he was tested for the design and crafting part of the courses.

 _(_ _Epic Score - Liberators_ _)_

The laptop ignited like a contact Taser, sending out 50,000 volts of current at 25 watts in a nimbus of 2 inches all around and didn't let up as it was plugged in the wall by the cord. After ten agonizing seconds, it let out a cloud of fluoro-marker gas that colored Nathan in a bright glow-in-the-dark pastel blue that would take ten days to finally wash off his skin, hair and nails. Even his teeth had glowed blue for six days! Then the machine started emitting a loud brain-rattling whiny sound like an air-raid siren whilst going through an emergency secured shut-down. When it was apparently off, it zapped Nathan for another ten seconds then began dialing the PAL-network to call security for help. The message it sent the MP's was heard through the device's loudspeaker clearly: " _a secured classified Lvl-14 device is being stolen and vandalized, emergency action required_ " followed by the sound of other dial-ups happening on regular cell-phone and satellite phone as well. Because, of course, the kid had integrated the PAL, cellular, satellite and CB systems inside the case and connected everything together on top of the Wi-Fi, Blue Tooth, walkie-talkie chipset and three types of network cable connectors plus the infra-red lens.

Nathan was screwed out of any credibility he had for some time to come. It had been a catastrophe of epic proportions that haunted Nathan to this day whenever he spoke to members of the US Presidential cabinet or high executives at the UEO. The blasted machine had spat out its emergency message to some two hundred security, police and military agencies across the UEO alliance membership. That meant that several dozen controllers and surveillance monitors had immediately accessed the security cameras installed by Lucas in his cabin to see what had happened to trigger the laptop's defensive call-out.

Let's just say that a certain captain was the one making apologies and repenting quite publicly on the bridge in front of witnesses. The order came from the White House and the US president had insisted in staying live on the main monitor while Bridger made a fool of himself by replaying the video of the entire event before making his apologies to the angry, frustrated teenager. The weeks after that had not been pleasant for the old officer as every time he asked Lucas for something he was told to write a formal work ticket or even worse, that since he didn't have his proper cabin, office and work station then he wasn't obliged to work or give the Navy anything until the famous **CONTRACT** was finally followed in full. Lucas then had the gall to tell him to his face that as a soldier, he should learn to obey properly the rules in place before he thought to give orders that made no sense.

Their relationship had been damaged badly since. Bridger thought it was a miracle that the poor kid was mentally wired the way he was. The mistake with that dumb joke about the Chief of Mammal Engineering posting had actually turned Lucas around from rabid, semi-depressed daily mood swings to having a job with the access and authority needed to get things done right. That simple fact that he could again work and be accounted as useful had done miracles for the stability and mental health of the child. He literally thrived on being useful to his community.

And Bridger, by threatening to take away his primary work tool had mercilessly attacked that and done damage to him. Any other kid would have sulked and found a way around the grounding by using a public terminal or hiding in one of the unused staterooms, out of the way and out of reach from the angry adult. Lucas instead had actually charged him formally with trying to steal and vandalize his **PRIVATE PROPERTY.** Not only did he not act dishonestly, he was not grounded and he was not restricted. It was instead Nathan who was fined by the JAG and had to pay Lucas 400$ in punitive damages for attacking the kid's integrity, dignity and making threats to him in the privacy of his **HOME**. Then they charged him some 3,000$ in court fees and administrative fees on top. Bastards!

And that was another kick in the teeth of any captain. Because of the civilians aboard, they now had to take account that the concepts of ' _public space_ ', ' _work space_ ' and ' _home space_ ' were in full force. Even with his sailors, Nathan now had to walk carefully if he wanted to use the old ' _surprise cabin inspection_ ' trick to harass and force a sailor into compliance before he pulled out the formal warnings and written reprimands. He could now get charged with harassment, invasion of domicile and others just like a police officer in a municipality if he didn't follow the right procedures when applying corrective measures to his crewmen, officers and civilian contractors. And since Lucas was a civilian contractor, the Law applied in full, no exception to be given or recognized. Period.

 **Dura Lex, Sed Lex;** _the Law is the Law and there are NO exceptions_ just because it's him who's bitching about stuff. In fact, the JAG told him quite clearly that these laws were made because people like him exist and have to be dragged back into line with the expectations of society every day. **SO** no, he would not get exempted of those laws made specifically to cover the type of case at hand. Period. And he got another negative note put in his file for having asked the illegal exemption, too!

Well, Nathan had re-learned about Laws, Rules, By-Laws, Protocols and Procedures the hard way. And as he sat now, waiting to see what Lucas had found out to make him pack up, he wondered again at just how far their relation had evolved. From going at each other's throats to barely civil coworkers to sharing a cabin to offering him the key to said cabin. The old mariner hoped that the kid would eventually forgive him his initial misstep and move on, abandon the blasted fear he always had when he was around Bridger.

 _(_ _Audiomachine - Ashes of Time_ _)_

The teen packed up all of his affairs, the little he had, into his work satchel and put on his shoes before moving to stand before the captain's desk. The flint-blue eyes were a bit weary but not frightful; a good sign and Nathan hoped it stayed that way for some time to come.

"Excuse me sir. I will be leaving for the night. I am aware that you have an extended conference with admiral Noyce coming and since there is no way to foresee when it will end, I have taken an arrangement to use a friend's couch for the night. I will see you tomorrow morning for the meeting with the NCIS agents. Good night sir."

The boy was turning towards the door to leave when Nathan sighed out loud and asked "Who are you bunking with tonight? If we finish not too late, I could call you and you could come back here, be at ease in your own little hill of blankets like last night."

The teen's face was unreadable. It was a skill ( _capacity?_ ) that he had acquired at an early age. That damned blank-faced look, those dead shuttered eyes that revealed no light or life inside. When he affected that presentation he looked like the human equivalent to the old abandoned mansions you saw in 'B' series films. Gloriously beautiful in a decrepit, haunted way and then when you went inside you saw anew the horrors that time and people had forgotten. And Lucas had a lot hidden inside. A lot.

"Thank you for your offer, sir. I think I can manage on my own. I have for a long time now and I will again. All I really need is a flat surface and a bed sheet. I can even use my satchel as a pillow, I've done it before and it's not that bad if it's placed right. But, for your information, and since you asked politely, I have an appointment with commander Hitchcock. We do believe it will run us far into the night so she offered her sofa as my crash pad for tonight. I do hope that she proves acceptable as a bunkmate, sir. I would hate to mention to her your lack of faith in her abilities at corralling a single meager boy."

Nathan pursed his lips and glared at the kid through half-lidded eyes, trying to figure out his actual mood. He seemed equal parts defiant, flippant and playful. Conclusion; he was being a brat! Well, in a playful, gentle way. He wasn't spoiled, selfish or mean spirited; just very talented at getting on the nerves of a certain aging sailor with a bad back and fluctuating patience.

"Fine then, Kiddo. Have a good night. I will see you at breakfast tomorrow morning."

Answering the officer with a quirk of the lips that could be loosely interpreted as an attempt at a small shy smile, Lucas walked out of the cabin, locking the door behind him as he left. Bridger passed a weary hand over the lower part of his face, rubbing his stubbly chin and wondering if the kid was reacting to the offer of the key or the events with Ford. Damn the brat! Nathan would need to use an oil derrick with a diamond drill-bit to dig deep enough to reach the information inside of where the young man had hidden it away. And there were no promises of recovering anything despite all the efforts. There were dragons in his poor late wife's favorite fantasy novels that hadn't guarded their treasures the way Lucas kept his emotions and memories under wraps. Oh well, later…

 **Sunday evening: Fighting against idiocy**

 _(_ _Marcus Warner - If I Should Return_ _)_

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 21:50pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; Near commander Hitchcock's cabin**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Lucas made it peacefully towards Kathy's cabin after a few mandatory pit stops including the mess hall for supplies of the edible kind. Mostly some solid snacks like sandwiches, a few individual cakes and this very good complete pecan pie fresh from the oven and still hot. The mess at the council meeting called for comfort food to match the serious follow-up they would have and he knew just how to ask the cooks in the galley for a few little things on the side of the regular scheduled bakes. They would be well fed tonight!

Lucas envied the young woman's apartment like 95% of the ship did. She had the same setup as all ' _regular_ ' senior officers aboard, besides the captain, in the form of a medium-sized one-and-a-half room suite. Meaning she had that incredibly rare commodity aboard navy ships: a bathroom. It was quite ordinary, comprised of a small shower stall, a cabinet-inset sink with the usual mirror covered cabinet suspended above and a toilet. What wasn't so ordinary was what it meant: privacy and easy reach. Both were incredibly useful when pulling all-nighters on tough projects or after a long workout in the gym that had you wanting to cool down alone. There was so much gossiping that went on in the public showering halls the rest of the crew had to use that washing in peace was impossible even if you were angrily screaming at everybody else to shut up. Lucas should know; he had tried!

Kathy was kind like a sister, allowing him to crash at her place like that. Most of the other guys didn't have a bathroom in their room; they went to the public showering halls and the public toilets like the rest. Lucas always thought it was a bit stingy from the navy to limit the privilege of an en-suite to so few people when so many of their ships were so big. Then again, the ships were sizeable but badly designed with little place left for the people once the engines, sensors and weapons had been placed in the hull. Only civilian cruise ships really planned for the passengers first and the machines later. And even then, that was done by having such a stiff separation between the machinery levels and the population levels, something a military ship couldn't afford to do.

 _(_ _Thomas Bergersen - Empire of Angels_ _)_

Still, the teenager was grateful for the friendly offer the commander had made to him, otherwise he might have just gone and slept in one of the MR shuttles like he had done a few times in the first two months when the stupid barely-adult jocks tried to haze him and Ford said nothing about it. Once inside the shuttle with the hatches locked and his customized portable sensors connected to the MR's onboard systems, he was unassailable unless they wanted to cut through with a plasma torch or blast in with an RPG launcher.

The MR shuttles had a luxurious necessity for such small boats: full wet bath with running hot water for showering when you returned from a deep water dive. In such occasions, the divers needed to wash off the salt or contaminants and get back some body-heat real quick hence the available hot water. It was also what made those shuttles such a wonderful place to hide in, along with other little things like their good comms array independent from the ship's central systems and therefore easy to use un-watched.

The MR's benches were another defining feature. They were set against the outer walls lengthwise and were nicely plush. The position allowed Lucas to strech his lanky frame full length without having his feet hanging in the air. They were also comfy to lean against with that tall full-length backrest like the couch in the captain's cabin. Lucas had always preferred sleeping on his side since he had been hospitalized a few years ago and had been forced to sleep on the right side for a couple of days to keep the weight off his left-side ribs and shoulder.

But that was a set of memories better left buried in the graveyard where he put them, like his hope for a decent relationship with his parents, an easy end to his adolescence years or a nice progressive transition into adulthood before problems and work ground him down. No, Lucas had a lot of dead things haunting him in the back of his mind and he had to once again stop walking to close his eyes and take a second to kill them off and bury them in shameful silence, back in their unmarked subliminal graves. All those evil, nasty things that hurt but couldn't be changed anymore.

 _(_ _Really Slow Motion - Optocell_ _)_

Reopening his eyes, Lucas was confronted with a sight he could have done without; a trio of young cock-shakers swaggering their way towards him with their hands a lot nearer their belt buckles, and the crotch of their jeans, than was polite or acceptable when walking in public. These monkeys were part of the hormone-powered fools that kept trying to incite a reaction of jealousy or childish envy from him when they made a spectacle of drinking their allotment of beer or going to a bar during shore leave. They were mindless tools but thought they should command the boat just because they were over 18 years old. They wanted something, anything, to hold over the intelligent, important, young scientist that threatened their manhood so much that it hurt just to think about how cock-blocked they were by his mental strength and lack of fear at their supposedly ' _big and mighty adultness_ '.

These bastards were the last of the group of criminals that had tried to convince Lucas that they had the right to administer ' _corporeal christian disciplinings_ ' upon him to make certain he lived a ' _godly boyhood_ ' of the ' _True-American_ ' kind just because they were past 18 and he wasn't. Many of their other friends had wound up in the hospital and two had even been mutilated for life and forced out of the service all together before they got the message that Lucas didn't believe their lies. Still, these three last lackwits didn't get the info. He was in shouting distance of Kathy's cabin, in the middle of senior officer country, and they were trying to gang up on him openly! What a bunch of retards!

That was the fatidic moment one of them pulled a serrated 18 inch long, garishly ornate and convoluted blade. What people had taken to call a 'zombie knife' or more commonly a 'sci-fi dagger' given that it looked like the blades Klingons, dark elves and others in sci-fi series characters used in honor duels and apocalypse survival scenarios. These had become collectibles in the geek communities but a lot of young thugs wanted them for the look and size because, " _Hey, the chicks they say size matters, you know…_ " The other two pulled smaller but just as nasty hunting knives in the nine to twelve inch lengths, the big but cheap kind bought at Wal-Mart or Cabela's over the internet. The kind juvenile street gang thugs like because they're big like they want people to think what's in their pants is ' _that big_ '. Stupid bunch of juvenile, immature, defective losers!

Lucas put down his armload of food and work satchel, leaning the lot against the bulkhead next to the door for commander Ford's cabin while never looking away from the slowly coming attackers. The man was absent, in the gym probably at this hour, as it was his habit since as far back as Lucas could remember about the man. Still, it gave him the time to discretely palm some safeties in both hands from the cuffs of his flannel shirt before standing up fully to face his attackers who had been coming in very slowly to savor their prey's fear. Or so they planned and wished. Their oh-so-manly swagger, walking in a zigzag that mixed the three boys randomly, was obviously designed to confuse Lucas and intimidate him, make him believe it was more than the three jocks in front of him. Their supposedly impressive stances, shoulders thrown back and pelvis thrust forward repeatedly as they advanced were no doubt intended to impress upon him their great big mighty manhood and just how much more adult than him they thought they were.

It amused Lucas to no end. It was like watching the mating dance of a poor besotted parakeet about to rub itself on a colored tennis ball, as though it had wooed the female of the species into accepting the male for a relationship. Poor confounded fools! After Shraeder and his minions, you'd think these bozos had understood that Lucas could and would kill to insure his safety aboard ship or anywhere else in life. Yet here they were, parading and emitting throaty chanted _gutturalities_. They acted just like the ancient Zulus in Africa did when preparing to ritually rape other men they had defeated in battle but not killed as they judged them too weak and shameful for an honorable warrior's death. And by the way they looked at him, moved, presented their knifes and crotches, that was their goal. They wanted him to mentally break so they could overtake him and hijack him to a locked room to beat, rape and kill him at their leisure.

It wouldn't happen in this life or the next. And they made a fatal mistake: Lucas abhorred sexual crimes and very forcefully supported the death penalty for kidnapping, torture, rape and murder. Since they planned all of the above, they had sealed their fates.

Lucas moved both hands far more quickly than he usually showed he was capable of doing; one towards the PAL in his flannel shirt's pocket and the other to a device hidden inside his thick ornate belt buckle. He triggered the emergency communications & localization functions of both devices before either attacker could realize what he had done. His hands then came back in place in front of his hips, each openly holding a metallic device shaped like a small marker-pen thus taking attention away from his real actions.

"Whaddaya know boyos! We've gots us here 'n albino coon tryin' to run away! Ah ah ah!" exclaimed Jimmiz Dunfries in his affected deep South-Texas accent. He was actually a sordid piece of white trash from the Arkansas sector of the Ozarks but he liked making others believe he was of _pure south_ descendancy. The defective bastard's parents and grand-parents on both sides had all done more time inside of jail cells than out. The ugly boy had creamy white skin that looked pasty and pock-marked, rust-red hair shorn to be just stubble on his scalp and watery shifty brown eyes that never looked the person he spoke to since he was a coward who feared everybody. Except for Lucas, of course. The reject from a mis-cleaned test tube had put it in his mind that the teen was smaller, leaner, lighter and physically weaker than him so he was easy prey that begged to be victimized for his own glory and pleasures. He was accompanied as always by the other two fuckshits that hailed from the Ozarks like he did and had about the same family history.

Bobby ' _boobers_ ' Bobson had a weak-white discolored skin from a childhood disease that cured weird due to the many narcotics and alcohol in his system at the time. He sported rust-red hair too and blue yes that were actually the only strongly colored, well defined feature about his mule's back-end ugly mug. He was called ' _boobers_ ' for his constant attention towards female breasts and never-ending stream of lewd displaced jokes about said breasts. In his eight months aboard he had already been reprimanded over a dozen times for lewdness and lascivious behaviors but somebody in DC kept saving him from a full court martial or dishonorable discharge. He was clearly the patsy and paid minion of somebody with money and power who wanted the little retard aboard. For what hadn't become clear yet.

The third lackey was actually called Jocks Wood Hardcock; yes his parents were that drunk and that stoned out when they named him in the prison infirmary where his mother had him. They were half-siblings from the same father by different mothers and sixteen years old when they had him. They told the guards about their incest like this; " _It never did no harm to Nana and Momma to marry them brot'as, t'won't hurt us nuttin neither._ " That explained so damn much… He was the prototypical skinhead wannabe, born into the militias and _Sovereign Citizens_ movement too just like his daddy. He had six-foot two-inch of height, 210 pounds of muscle backed by about 30 pounds of fatty flab, washed-out white skin like he was born in a vat of bleach and cobalt-blue eyes that looked not quite sane or stable when you gazed straight into them. Which would never happen as he constantly scanned around for threats that only his overactive imagination could see.

Lucas's upper lip curled upwards in a sneer of contempt as he evaluated the trio of armed enemies arrayed against him. This was going to be so easy it would be embarrassing to claim it as a victory. More like gassing rats in a sewer pipe, really. Amused at the circumstance, Lucas realized that the clean-up would be handled by NCIS and JAG since they were finally aboard.

The teen pushed a small button on each metallic device he held and threw them at the attackers at shoulder height in an under-handed lob like a softball pitch. The three young thugs didn't think besides moving asides to let the projectiles through without being hit. It didn't matter as the attack was wide-area. The small pressurized canisters let out a fluorescent orange gas that filled the full width and height of the corridor on about 12 feet of length.

Then the three different screams of agony began in earnest.

Their great powerful ADULT attack had been broken in less than 40 seconds by a CHILD. The teenager stood still as he watched the product of his intellect hard at work. "Incompetent monkey-descended inbred buffoons, the lot of them! Weren't there any abortions or birth control pills in the towns where they were spawned? It's no wonder I approve of eugenics, you know…" he told the empty air of the corridor.

Sighing deeply in frustration that his calm evening with Kathy was now seeping through the metal grates of the deck plates, Lucas touched his PAL while orienting the camera on the device to capture the last moments of his aggressors. He signaled Crocker that he had a mess in the senior officer's quarters to pick up for processing. As the inhuman screams of misery cut off abruptly in chocking deathly gasps, the young man snorted and told the security chief "Better bring your largest shop-vac if you take too much time to get here. The fools are gonna liquefy kinda fast at the temperature in the boat. Lucas out."

The teen locked eyes with Kathy Hitchcock whose face had just become visible in the porthole of her door and he used sign language to tell her to stay inside safely. The gaseous anti-organic acid would take another five minutes to reach its saturation point, becoming inactive five minutes after that.

And if Crocker's team took more than half an hour to come, 97% of the organics would have been dissolved to liquid and then sublimated to gas so only the solids like clothes and a few bone fragments would need removal by hand. Easier clean-up for the janitors like that. Lucas smiled in satisfaction that his multi-effects ' _kill-sterilize-remove contaminants_ ' warfare gas was functional. He was certain admiral Noyce and Section 7 would like its efficiency too. Eliminating traitors, defectors and terrorists without leaving a damning trail would become a much more easily applicable solution in the future.

 **Sunday evening: Billy Boy the Pig Farmer**

 _(_ _Audiomachine - The Origin of Species_ _)_

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 22:00pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; Captain's cabin**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Nathan stood at the private service counter of his cabin, placed against the outer hull just under the view port. He was fixing himself another mug of strong coffee and a small plate of cookies to munch on during the call when the cabin's intercom beeped.

"Captain, sir! Admiral Noyce on secured holo-web channel #3 as scheduled. Should we patch it through?"

Bridger walked passed the couches towards Lucas's most emblematic creation to date, the _gaseous medium holographic display_ ; the second most powerful computer aboard after that damnable portable gizmo the kid was married to. The 62 year old man pushed a button on the console to light up the display and let it accept the call automatically. As soon as the bust of his old academy friend was visible he pushed another button to signal the bridge that all seemed right and they could leave them be.

Bill opened the festivities with a shit-eating grin and a fast one under the belt. "Well Nathan, you seem in a lot better mood than the last few times we spoke. It's good that you're not so blue anymore…"

Bridger gave his best buddy alive a smile with all teeth and replied gamely "Same to you Will. I would have thought that all the paperwork from our last little shindig would have buried you so deep we'd never hear from you again. I was about to send out a search team with avalanche dogs but I'm glad you dug your way out all right… Being rescued by bureaucrats though, I would die of shame if I were in your shoes…"

The two old acquaintances gazed at each other with both friendship and a challenge in their eyes. They were old school navy and needed to see for themselves the strength, stability and mindset of the other periodically to reassure themselves that all was right. Too many of their age group had already died from war, accidents, disease and suicide. And those were the lucky ones who died still knowing who they were and what they stood for. The unlucky ones were in hospices, unawares and sometimes completely insensate due to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's complications and other neuro-degenerative illnesses. Better to die with your eyes open, fighting for what you knew true and fair.

Having seen the other person's metal was still solid and sharp, the old pals spent a few minutes in basic politeness and platitudes. Nathan bitched plentily about his bad back whilst William griped about the onset of full arthritis in both legs which at his girth and weight was never a good thing. Both men dreaded the day their doctors would tell them they needed a wheelchair to move around even in their own dwelling. At that time, it would be enough; each had his exit planned already.

After a few sips of coffee and bites of snacks, both got down to the businesses at hand.

"In prelude to the hard stuff, Bill, the NCIS and JAG people got here about an hour ago and I had Krieg billet them all in one cluster of staterooms to keep them in view. The GAO people should be here in another week; they scheduled their trip to arrive as we get back from shore leave. By that time, Lawrence Wolenczak's lawyers should be here as well. Any heads up about those guys? I have never had to deal with them but by the face Lucas made when he spoke of them, they won't be pleasant."

Bill twirled his cup slowly as if divining deeper truths in the brown depths of his cappuccino. "The lead man is an old crud, older than you and me by a dozen years, who thinks the entirety of America exists to satisfy his venal pleasures and kowtow to his magnificence. I can't imagine that somebody with the kid's temperament would have gone along well with that geriatric bastard."

"Oh, joy! Another useless rich waste of skin to deal with! Is that the only type that Lawrence has in his entourage? The ditzy, suck-up, vacuum-headed type? Couldn't he choose somebody with a solid character and even temper? He works for the UEO on the most major project currently under construction! The organization's collective reputation is on the line here! He could make an effort to choose a lawyer based on more than name and money!"

Bill snorted derisively and responded nastily "You got the only level headed, decent bloke the family has left alive, Nate. And I envy your having him at hand like that. If you want to switch with mine, I can send Lawrence over any day you want. Just don't be surprised if I never switch them again. Losers weepers, my friend, and if you lose Lucas, you don't get him back! I keep him to myself, _capisce_?"

Nathan grunted an undetermined sound from his throat that could be an assent, a challenge or a request for time to think about it. Any ways, they had plenty to talk about during their conversation.

"Did you manage to look into McFarlane's situation and his little shitpit up north? The whole setup doesn't look above board to me. And the recordings about his orders to Jonathan Ford? Was anything in that legally binding? Can we maneuver on anything against him?"

Noyce sipped his sugary coffee and pursed his lips in disgust at the too sweet thing. Unfortunately, it was the only type of coffee he could drink along with his new arthritis pills or the drink and medicine combined to make a taste like skunk oil in his mouth that made him sick enough to retch.

Looking up at his old friend, Billy made a vague gesture with his left hand. "The orders he signed to Ford were original and authentic but illegal in all points. He acted outside his jurisdiction, outside his command chain and most definitely outside of any rights to regulate access to the boat's secure rooms as that is normally the prerogative of the captain, under advisement of the admiralty. Just for the fact that he sent an un-cleared officer to enter the S.C.I.F. thus allowing access to Level-11 and above informations in an unsanctioned manner to a person not read-into the programs, he was losing his posting, his rank and getting a dishonorable discharge that would take away his pension too. And that's just the beginning before the court martial got its grips into him."

Nathan was now smiling like a shark contemplating a large tuna. With many, many teeth. "Oh? Tell me more, old pal… What could have happened that was so bad he loses more than his commission and pension at his age?"

Noyce's smirk was neither kind nor pleasant. "Weeelll, he might have made enemies in the NSA and CIA when he did what he did. Because of his little faux-pas with Ford, several agencies have begun to track the man's contacts with their own internal employees and external contractors, just to be sure. And what do you know? In less than ten hours of digging through their files they have already found several hundred cases of malversations, peddling of power and influence, use of agents for his own corrupt goals and profits, etc… As we speak, the good general McFarlane is in the capable hands of the President's Secret Service in a secured undisclosed location and will remain there for the near future as everybody is sifting through their files and cases to find out how far and deep the bastard's reach went. There are, as we speak, real fears that some of the criminal acts he did could have jeopardized US security and our country's position with NATO and the UEO. There are rumors coming out from France and Britain that he might have been instrumental in the corruption going on inside the UN before it fell. Seeing how he acted around the UEO executive building in NCQ, I do believe he hasn't stopped his criminalities; he just switched his _branding_ and renewed his clientele."

Bridger laughed out loud. He couldn't help himself. After a few minutes of hilarity, he calmed down enough to comment "You do realize Bill, that everybody who goes against Lucas in some way loses everything in less than a day? If we look at every enemy he faced since coming aboard four months ago, not a single one survived hostile contact against him. McFarlane is already imprisoned on enough charges to warrant sending him to GITMO for the rest of his life and the investigation isn't even official yet! Ha!"

Nathan sobered up quickly though. "If people did their jobs right, bastards like him and his stupid followers couldn't take over the military or government branches and destroy the lives and careers of decent folk! It's about time somebody woke up and cleaned the place out! God knows the Pentagon could use a good washing out, and the DoD too!"

Billy nodded once and responded "Yeah, I agree with you. It's just my methods are viewed as ' _too harsh_ ' against the **decent, faithful followers of the one true faith of the pure America**. If you get the underlying message…? I have known about crap and crimes in the services for decades, Nate, since my first day in boot camp. I saw black marketing, contraband, smuggling booze, knives, porn and other stuff. Then, when I joined Naval Intel, I thought we were gonna clean out the criminals, or at least the traitors who sell our secrets abroad. No. It's not what USNI does. We only watch and report, the Oval Office decides who does what and we rarely get told what happened to our informations or the people on our watch-lists."

Scratching his almost bald head, Noyce continued his explanation. "What I found in USNI files is that McFarlane was watched by several agencies for over thirty years already, practically since the first whiff of abnormality was detected. And the Man has been deep in shit since even before he enlisted. His record before the age of 18 is sealed but I got a peek. He should never have been allowed in the door, let alone be promoted into the officers. But the multiple wars against communists in Asia and then the fights where we helped the Arabs against Russia… You know how those epochs were. We lacked men with enough experience and willpower to get the dirty jobs done. McFarlane was kept and promoted because he stayed in the service, survived the wars and he had contacts at home and abroad, money and dirt on everybody in a thousand miles of his office. We just couldn't get rid of the encysted worm until he hit the wrong target and caused a chain reaction in the people above my pay-grade."

The captain almost chocked on his mouthful of coffee when he heard that. "How the hell could this bastard have allies so high that it takes the Oval Office and the Secretariat of the UEO to get his head on the block? He can't have dirt on everybody that high in the command ladders could he?"

Bill made a pensive little sound as he exhaled and shrugged despondently. "You have no idea of what kinds of people gravitate around the higher echelons of the US government, the NATO directorate or the UEO Alliance executive cabinet. Trust me, Nathan, there's enough shit in there to keep all of my pigs happy, deep in the muck and well fed for long after I'm gone to the earth myself."

Bridger was pressing his lips into a thin tight line to keep from swearing out loud the stream of invectives he wanted to scream at the monitor. Reaming out Bill wouldn't help the situation. Considering the general was now a dead end, he changed subjects. Not that it would end any better.

"Have you seen the copy of Lucas's report that I sent you? I'm sure you haven't read it, but have you at least glanced at it? We have a bloody mess on our hands, Bill. And we were just told this evening about several large, very rich and powerful, civilian companies being involved in it. Lucas has several research projects that were paid for by those companies that were never even started because he was denied the office and materials to work on them. This is a time-bomb Bill and it's gonna blow up any minute now! Why the Hell was I never told about this before?"

Bill leaned backwards in his chair and hummed thoughtfully about that one. "The responsibility for that fiasco is spread around on all three levels; the ship, the US Navy and the UEO exec. The people at the top knew about the contract and the external partners involved, just like the US Navy brass did. However, some people like the generals McFarlane, Franklin, Thomas and McGrath, the admirals Sinclair, Labrie, Desalt and old he-whore Rennech along with several other captains and commanders all worked together to blockade things."

Noyce took a bite of some buttered crusty bread to offset the taste of his combined coffee and meds thus allowing Nathan to chew a little something as well. "The result was that all the requests Lucas made to have his proper cabin and office before leaving to hunt Stark were ignored or stamped ' _out of bounds for position_ ' even though that was a clear lie to anybody who read the file and the contract in it. All his demands for material and equipments to activate his research projects were denied systematically without even reading them. It was at the point that even priority orders for parts to repair the ship had to be fought for as the base-born curs tried to block those too and put the blame on Lucas for the dysfunctions in the ordering system."

Noyce frowned angrily at the next bit: "It got to the point where the kid started hacking into the UEO servers to push his parts orders through to get the materials and equipments on time to affect the repairs to keep you afloat and alive. When they realized this, they tried to have him arrested and jailed in a private christian juvenile jail without even bothering with an investigation or tribunal of any sorts. And THAT is when some people's alarm bells began ringing. If the kid was so criminally defunct, and they could prove it so easily, why not make an example of him? Or at least start the legal process and then negotiate with his family to get some money out of Lawrence to keep things quiet? That's the usual way to fill up some holes in the state's budget every year; you hit on the rich dummies who commit crimes and haggle with them to set them free in exchange for a mound of cash and electoral support. Why were these officers and DoD bureaucrats not playing the game?"

Seeing his friend was quite attentive, William continued his speech. "That's the point of the internal investigation we are at right now in the UEO exec and US Navy quartermaster's staff. The questions and check-ups have just begun a few days ago after Shraeder invaded you as the orders for that experiment were never validated properly and weren't legal. The papers general Thomas sent over to force you to conduct the hull-siphon tests in those conditions were never approved by the admiralty, the joint-chiefs-of-staff or the Oval Office. I mean, for Christ's sake! They used an active service nuclear sub with active ICBM's and mark 10 atomic torpedoes aboard to try and see if they could sink and then purge the ship like it was a bath toy! While the nukes were aboard! And then the retarded idiot orders you to let in a shuttle full of unknowns while you are essentially running with less than a drydock skeleton crew! I can tell you that the meeting with the POTUS about that ended Thomas's career then and there. He's suspended pending the results of the investigation but even if he should be cleared enough to avoid anything above a written reprimand and an unpaid suspension, the President told him he wanted his resignation as soon as the Secret Service, NCIS, JAG, GAO, FBI and NSA gave their reports. That man will not survive the fallout from this; he has Leavenworth in his future."

Before Nathan could give an opinion about it all, the intercom of his cabin as well as his PAL beeped out the aggressive tonality that meant there was an emergency somewhere aboard his ship. "Captain to the senior officers' sector! Repeat! Captain to the senior officers' sector! Lucas murdered people! We have three dead and chemical contamination of the corridor! Repeat! Captain wanted in the senior officers' sector! Now for fucking Christ's sakes! Can't somebody be found to control the bat-shit crazy little psycho before he kills all of us?!"

William Noyce gave a nasty, merciless smile at his old friend of forty years. "You'd better go see what the kids are up to behind your back. You never know these days. They might even think they can manage the boat without you."

Bridger's answer was to slam an angry hand on the console to shut off the channel and thus wipe off the grinning loon's countenance from his field of vision.

Walking to his desk to pick up his many little things he filled his pockets with, Nathan had the nasty feeling that his night was going to be as eventful as the last while being less restful to boot.

Jogging out of his cabin, he remembered the presence of the NCIS and JAG contingents just as he almost plowed into one of the civilian agents. Oh, yeah! They had some of those now and they would want to be involved in the mess. Well okay, Nathan thought as he guided the small aggregation of humans behind him towards the conflict zone. They could handle the investigation and the clean-up afterwards too; less to do for him and his crew like that.


	4. TOUCHDOWN OF THE STORM

**SeaQuest**

This story takes place in season 1, just after the SeaQuest was violently boarded and taken over by Colonel Shraeder and his mercenaries. I will be modifying several elements of that episode to fit with the fic, notably that there were more mercs in the transport, they were more violent and Lucas had been significantly more reactive and aggressive when helping to safeguard the ship and crew. The modifications to the canon of the episode will be minor and showed as flashbacks or during discussion between crew members.

Read the beginning of Chapter 1 for the full disclaimer and notes.

*** A message of thanks to " **00oo** " for following my stories and marking me as a favorite author.

*** A message of thanks to " **Mekh'Iis En'Ghae'rhon** " for following this story.

 **DURA LEX, SED LEX**

 **The Law may be hard, but it is The Law**

 **FOURTH CHAPTER; TOUCHDOWN OF THE STORM**

 **Sunday night: Clean-up in the senior aisle**

(NCIS – opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 22:28pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; Senior officer's sector**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Senior Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo had to grit his teeth to keep from retching at the smell in the confined space of the corridor. The facemasks supplied to evaluate safely the crime scene were of the small, _limited_ -filtering variety that industries have to allow people to wade through the smoke of a fire long enough to reach either a sprinkler valve or an exit to safety out of the blaze. This small thing was never intended to treat out odors and truly toxic emanations as what permeated the hallway. No, that particular carrion stench was the sort that their HAZMAT gear on the NCIS truck was designed to endure and filter out. Pity the truck doesn't swim or fit in the cargo hold of an MR-class shuttle. Tony could give Senior's ( _his Dad's_ ) last gambling gains for a white suit and enclosed rebreather right about now.

Turning to his colleague, the scientifically minded and geekiest of all them that art in cyberspace, Timothy McGee, Tony asked in deadpan voice "Okay McGeekeroo; what was it that turned our posse of three wild dogs into the equivalent of an un-heated MRE without the envelope around it?"

Timothy McGee graced his partner of almost a decade with a withering glance which was belied by his gamely response "Really Tony? Uncooked MRE? It looks more like the stuff from a can of Campbell soup when you open it and still have to add water. It's already gooey and squishy, not dehydrated at all. Are you sure the jetlag hasn't affected you more than you let on? I mean, you did just turn 45 and the human body doesn't react as it does when the middle age is passed. Reflexes, perceptions, endurance and adaptation all take a dive… Maybe we should have Ducky give you a little check-up under the hood just to be certain you can still function. Not everybody is built with tank parts like Gibbs. There's no shame in wanting a little downtime to catch up some Zzz's if you need it." He completed with a shit-eating grin at the expense of his friend.

The senior field agent was about to try to answer the rather spectacular burn-back he had just endured when the joyful, impish laughter of their female colleague was heard behind them. She was kneeling besides Jimmy Palmer as they spread out specially made plastic body bags; thickened triple layers and sprayed with silicone inside to stay impermeable for up to a week of non-refrigerated transport. Ziva giggled girlishly at something Palmer said in relation to married life and his wife then she spotted Ducky jogging up behind them with the ship's own chief of medicine. The mature woman looked formidable and angry at the same time, barreling down the corridor at them like a train forcing the older man to rush to follow her in time.

From the other side, behind McGee and DiNozzo, came the captain and Gibbs, their Boss, marching in locked step and both wearing expressions deemed ' _the war face_ ' by everyone subconsciously at the same time.

Taking a deep calming breath, the old mariner raised an imperative hand and said simply "No! You do not get to declare him mentally unfit or unstable just because he does things that you wouldn't do yourself or don't approve! END of discussion, doctor Westphalen! Act according to the rules of your office or hand the position over to somebody who will! NOW!" The captain thundered harshly and loudly enough to get every one in the hallway to cringe at the public dressing down the woman had just gotten.

Taking a minute to compose themselves, the SeaQuest crew looked at each other in the eyes and Kristen asked in a low voice "Is that how it ends? In a choice between an out-of-control child and the professional stance of a learned adult, you choose to let pass everything this little rapscallion does unchallenged and set the adult out to pasture? I wonder how the UEO and the US Navy will react to this flagrant lack of discipline, leadership and basic moral judgment, captain. Perhaps you would wish to reconsider your biased position in the light of the lawmen being present amongst us. Surely, this farce of turning the premier warship of the fleet into a kindergarten will not last any longer now that proof is at hand he cannot be trusted or even controlled!"

A tall, lean black man in his mid forties approached from behind the two doctors and asked in an acidic tone "Are you again trying to defamate and spread libelous baseless accusations against my union member doctor? I could swear we just had a conversation with the JAG people about that less than 10 minutes ago in your office before the alarms went off. Perhaps we need to give you a refresher already? At your age, memory isn't what it used to be, hein?" Turning to the ship's master, the man took out a badge and identified himself formally "GAO senior field investigator Xavier Hollbert, official representative of the ' _Syndicate of US Federal Employees_ '. I'm here to advise Mr. Wolenczak through his recruitment phase and also with the multiple legal depravities that happened against him. Including this little one here. Oh, yeah, and a good evening to you too, captain. It's mighty nice of you to host us GAO folks aboard your boat for the duration."

Bridger coughed once, an abortive little choke of angry air that escaped from deep in his belly and came out like a small cannon blast. He exchanged a brief staring contest with the GAO / Union rep agent and turned away to glare at his doctor, clearly not winning against the lawman.

"Doctor, my patience with you is at its end. Considering the words of the GAO agent and the short but determined conversation I had with you after the ship's council this evening, I am left with the conclusion that you are both unable emotionally to contain yourself and unwilling to make any efforts. You obviously think you know more than everyone aboard and that you are superior to all you gaze upon. Well, no you don't and no you're not! What you are is suspended without pay, rank or privileges until the return from shore leave and from then until the many investigations of the NCIS, JAG and GAO are done. Only then will I contemplate the reports about your competency and your mental ability to hold your office. Right now, you don't sound stable or reliable enough to hold it or manage the science projects that you supposedly overlook. We will see if a couple of weeks of enforced reflexion without your badge and your god-complex will change that damned bitchy attitude of yours! Get out of my face and stay away until you're called on!"

Westphalen had paled steadily until she looked faint. She was being punished! She, a grown and mature woman, a summit in her many fields, was being sent to her corner just like a mere girl-child being reproved by the headmaster in school! She was about to open her mouth to blast the man verbally and tell him exactly what he could do with his high and mighty opinion of his manhood when the silver headed man at his right opened a leather badge-holder and shouted "Team Leader Gibbs, NCIS. This is my patch, lady. If you piss a line around my patch, it's me you have to deal with. Ziva! Take the medic to her office and help her heal herself of whatever ails her. In silence! We have people trying to work here and others want to sleep!" Not that his tone of voice and barked orders would help either…

Ziva David, young, beautiful, lean and nimble, athletic and definitely predatory in her walk and manners smiled unpleasantly at Westphalen as she pushed open her thin, tight leather jacket and showed off the NCIS badge clipped to her belt along the pistol holster and several knife sheaths. "Do not worry Gibbs" she replied playfully in her mediterranean-accented english "I will arrest her if she resists. And I do hope she does resist. It would give me the opportunity to see for myself if Ducky is correct when he stipulates that ' _a medic who heals himself has a fool for a patient and a charlatan for a healer_ ' humm?" She said as she smiled evilly at the older woman while walking up to Westphalen close enough to be inside her personal space, intimidating her quite clearly.

 **Sunday night: Questions, Round-1**

(JAG – opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 22:36pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; commander Hitchcock's cabin**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Lucas sat peacefully on the sofa, munching on some still hot pecan pie with his ominous large thermal tankard of coffee standing by quite stably on the left-side armrest next to him. The cheap porcelain plate on his lap and stainless steel fork in his hand were UEO navy supply as demonstrated by the blue emblem on them. Like the plate, cutlery and mug of tea in Kathy's hands, they had been loaned out to the young woman with the cabin. Privilege of rank and function, so it was said. Not that the teen complained. He was after all supposed to have a similar setup in his own cabin and office when he got them but right now, he was in a mood to be a mite jealous and bitch about the unfairness. Probably because of the absence of anything else to do or speak of, as he didn't think himself as the bitchy type, usually.

The two friends listened in companiable silence the noises and voices from the corridor as the NCIS people, backed by ship's security, went about the dreary business of tallying the dead and removing them to the morgue for the official autopsy. Exchanging a look and mutual eye roll, both understood that the autopsy would be done to assuage the officiousness of bureaucrats rather than by any need for enlightenment as to the causes of the deaths. They knew the how, why and whom already, after all.

The scanners in the corridor had all been fully functional, as had the PAL's worn by Lucas and the three idiots. When Lucas triggered the emergency mode on his device, it called out to all other systems around it and awoke dormant safety measures that the teenager had spread around in the last four months. It sent all the PAL and similar ship-linked devices into emergency recording as well as using their voice and face recognition apps to identify Lucas and broadcast his coordinates to the bridge and security office so help could get there faster.

The people running the investigation had about a dozen different visual perspectives to view the events from as they unfolded. It would take a nitwit of significant imbecility to deny it was self defense against an attack by an armed gang that tried to ambush him. Cue the nasal, high strung voice of Kristen Westphalen in response to shouts from Bridger. Both Kathy and Lucas turned their heads towards the third person in the cabin, senior lieutenant Manilow Crocker, chief of security, as he was drinking a deep pull from his coffee. The rotund older man sat on the sofa's third seat, at Lucas's right so as to create an obstruction between the door and the boy should trouble come running in. He already saw the video of the attack and knew the records of all three retards by heart. He also knew some people would try to harm Lucas anyways as their own jobs and positions were held back or seen as less important due to his excellent work and performance. Jealousy can make humans do terribly stupid things under normal circumstances. Under duress, it was unimaginable what cruelty could be done in the name of _keeping the community safe_.

The three persons heard clearly the end of the argument and winced at the not-at-all subtle threats the NCIS agent uttered against the female doctor before leading her away, back to her lair – hemm, hemm – office on the sea-deck. A few minutes of low toned swears, questions, oaths and some not so good answers saw the master of the ship appear in the doorway with a stormy expression on his face. He took in the people in the cabin and how they sat. The kid and Crocker on the sofa with the middle place empty between them. Kathy was sat tailor-style on her bed, back against the bulkhead. The atmosphere seemed placid in a resigned way, not filled with dread or anger. Bridger was intrigued by this.

The old mariner walked completely inside the cabin after getting a discrete hand gesture from his second mate that she gave permission for his presence. Behind him followed Gibbs with a closed but neutral expression on his face, his body language neither tense nor passive. Then came Hollbert who insisted in being present to assist his union member with his defense, if necessary.

Nathan extended his left leg and tapped the sofa's leg with his foot. When both occupants looked at him he said "Okay, Lucas, on the bed besides Hitchcock. And for Pete's sake Kiddo, I know you're a growing boy, but stow the baked goods while we're talking through this mess! Damn! Only a teenaged boy could eat through this smell and not puke!"

Wearing a shit-eating grin of epic proportions, Lucas relocated to the bed after setting his almost empty plate on the small service counter next to the micro-wave oven and in-built induction cooker. He kept his massive stainless steel thermal mug with him though, much to the amusement of Gibbs and Crocker whilst Bridger closed his eyes and shook his head in dismay.

"How in bloody blue blazes do you hope to sleep if you go through so much caffeine?" Nathan asked, though his exasperation at the boy's antics was clearly colored by his fondness for him. The kid's minor proclivities were harmless as things went, but it couldn't be healthy for a boy his age to consume between four and six of these miniature barrels of ' _crude oil_ ' every day. He'd have to ask the NCIS doctor to run a more exacting blood-tox panel and maybe some specialty tests to verify that the teen's kidneys and liver had not developed any problems.

Lucas answered his commanding officer with a hugely self-satisfied smirk "Hey, if you got it, flaunt it! And I definitely got it! You have any idea the trouble I go through to get a decent blend instead of the dehydrated compost they feed you guys-in-blue in the mess hall? I can tell you; it ain't easy and it costs both legs. It's a really bad, nasty, expensive habit, it is… But damn, it's good!" he winked brattily at the four older men while raising his tankard in mock salute before taking a long pull of brown creamy coffee so hot there was a little bit of steam escaping around his lips as he drank.

Settling down besides Kathy with his legs folded and his back against the bulkhead, he seemed much more at ease now. In truth, Lucas was satiated as he had managed to eat an entire quarter of the pecan pie before the investigators arrived. The look of disapproval on his female friend's face as she saw him inhale the food was incredibly amusing. She looked even more peeved at his barely mannered high-speed consumption of nutty-sugary goodness than she was upset at the mess he made in the officer's hallway. Heu… Women? Who knows…?

Nathan sat on the sofa in the place vacated by Lucas and turned sideways a bit to see all the people and gestured for Crocker to move towards him to the middle cushion. Hollbert took the far right spot of the sofa while Gibbs opted to stay standing in the entryway after closing and locking the door.

Bridger crossed his arms in a huff, sending a look of parental disapproval at the smirking teen while Crocker was trying to hide his walrus-like girth behind the regular-sized coffee cup he held with both hands in front of his face. Bridger turned a gimlet eye on his old academy buddy, fulgurating him with his eyes for his lack of verbal or gestual support. The look he gave commander Hitchcock promised a long talk with her about Lucas and how she should care for him when he was with her. The young female officer seemed amused all of a sudden before she cleared her face and demonstrated nothing short of the utmost professional behavior.

Hollbert and Gibbs observed it all patiently, waiting until everybody was situated before he tapped the badge hanging from his jacket pocket and spoke, taking the lead. "Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Team Leader, NCIS major cases team out of Washington DC. Identify yourself and walk me through the events."

Lucas shrugged almost dismissively. The expression on his features was hard to read as it seemed he didn't know what he was feeling and couldn't exteriorize it in a coherent manner. Gibbs mentally noted the little details in his posture, his rumpled worn clothes, the dark bags under his eyes and his pale, sallow skin that showed he was clearly at the end of all endurance. The kid took a few breaths as he frowned, ordering his thoughts.

"Lucas Andrew Wolenczak, 16 years old; CME, CCA. I am being recruited by the GAO to hold authority for all Ciphered data and Classified IT aboard. Guess you don't need a rundown of the whole day. So, heu… We had a rough ship's council session. Because of that I was with captain Bridger, in his cabin, working on my portable station. At around 21:10pm I got a memo on my screen that he had a vid-call scheduled for 22:00pm with admiral Noyce on a secured holo-web channel. Since there are only five places aboard for that system including the captain's quarters, I knew it was time to pack up and leave. So I shut off my station, exchanged a few words with captain Bridger and left. I had arranged with Kathy to spend the night in her cabin since we had a few tons of paperwork and common inventory to process through, so… I asked if her couch was available and she said yes."

Gibbs interrupted the boy "I am aware that your cabin is still quarantined under NCIS yellow tapes from the invasion and you need to sleep elsewhere. Weren't you given another cabin in the meanwhile? Don't they have a lot of staterooms on this tub for the diplomats and company reps? Why are you sleeping around like that, living out of a bag and hand-outs?" The older man's tone was assertive, firm and held an underlying warning to not bullshit him with vagaries. Hollbert took out a small PDA and began typing notes about what he heard to date. There were questions to be answered ASAP.

Lucas pursed his lips, not happy the man had seen through the details the teen had wanted glossed over. "Fine; you want to pull out the tumors already, you got 'em. Since I set foot on this boat I was supposed to have a senior officer's cabin and a secured enclosed office on sea-deck to lock up some materials and projects that are not safe for public consumption. I never got either. Instead, some commander-graded bozo in drydock who was there for just ONE DAY decided that I was just a lying little delinquent and I needed some urgent redressment of my disobedient, un-American, ungodly attitude. The guy was there ONE DAY! He wasn't even assigned to duty or evaluations or investigations! No! He was just a fuckshit bastard passing by who _accidentally happened to be present_ when I arrived and logged in for my billet and equipments. The retard has friends in the Pentagon who asked him to give me a message. It goes like this: I am nobody and nothing and I will suffer under their _White Painted Cross_ until I learn my place in submissiveness at the feet of my betters, the adult men of the Faith."

Lucas grabbed angrily for his tankard and drank a deep draft of hot coffee to try and calm himself down enough to participate without sounding like a maniac. After drinking his fill and carefully putting the mug back in its place, Lucas continued his tale. "Even before the bloody contracts were signed between me, my father and the many branches of government, I have been aware that there was a group of fanatics working in the shadows to get their mitts on me. They are trying to convince everybody they can reach that I am indocile, undisciplined and dangerous to let free without the heavy hand of _christian corporeal disciplinings_ on my body every day I breathe. In other words, they are preaching openly in hope of converting people into believing that I deserve daily beatings so that the credulous idiots who follow them would go out and give me those beatings."

The teenager leaned forward, eyes closed and teeth grinding in frustration. "None of my complaints have ever given any results. None from my attorney have ever been answered either. No complaints from the ship's officers were ever looked into and some of the crew were in fact threatened to stay out of the way of ' _righteous Christian Devotees at work_ ' or they would lose their career. Now that Lawrence is involved directly, I honestly wonder what the situation will become."

Lucas locked eyes with Gibbs as he passed both hands through his long hair, pulling on it angrily. "The end result you saw for yourself. I have been forced to live the last four months at the bottom of a shitpit barred by two airlocks or else borrow a couch from a friend. And that's not even the worse of the whole situation. That's just my personal existence. What they are doing to my jobs and collaboration projects on top of screwing with the ship's parts orders and crew assignments, that's a whole other kettle 'o nasties. That's why I am here tonight. I bunked in Bridger's cabin the last three days; t's enough. I like the guy but not that much. And I know that after the council we had this evening, I ain't his favorite bloke either. So I hauled my hide out on the road while it was still intact."

Gibbs looked towards each adult in turn and saw clearly the teen wasn't lying or exaggerating the situation and that explained the horde of JAG and GAO people plus civilian lawyers coming in during the next few days. This was a whole different level of corruption than what his team had dealt with in the past. Somebody used to rubbing elbows with the generals and admirals was pulling strings to get this done and then covered up so nobody traced it back to its origin. Well, he would put McGee and Abby on the cyber trail while David, DiNozzo and himself got the human trail. Vance could make himself useful by hobknobbin' with the brass and SecNav to figure out which starry shoulder pads had it in for the kid.

The silver haired man waited a few seconds more for the young worker to calm himself before he asked the next set of questions. What he saw wasn't good; it gave him a shiver down his spine. He exchanged glances with Hollbert, Crocker and Bridger to make certain they saw the same things he did. Yes, they did and weren't in any position to help any more than they already did.

Lucas sat up properly on the side of the bed as he yanked his hands from his mop of blond hair and slammed them on his knees hard, gripping his thighs with clenched white-knuckled fingers. His entire light wiry frame was tense with constricted anger and bottled up rage. The boy was practically vibrating with the pent-up rage he had forced back inside, into the core depths of himself. Just a few seconds later, the adolescent looked as normal and unremarkable as any boy his age sitting in a bus or park bench. His face was now completely neutral and his body language was projecting a slight dispassionate indolence proper to bored teenagers all over the world.

This was bad. As in ' _clusterfuck going fubar-in-the-hole while we're moving crates of thermite_ ' bad and getting worse. Gibbs had seen people like this before. They took on responsibility, accepted burdens, took the blame even when innocent because fighting for an honest outcome would never give anything good anyways. They put everything away. They bottled up their emotions deep where nobody ever saw them. Sorrow, sadness, loneliness, anguish, anger, rage… They packed the vault inside the core of their soul until it was full then put in more, and more, until it all blew up. Jethro had seen a lot of good, decent marines and sailors go down this road. Mostly to protect their wife and kids from the horrors of war; some because the jobs were classified; some because the civilians just couldn't understand… It always ended badly. PTSD – _Post Traumatic Stress Disorder_ – could be caused or worsened by a situation like this. The kid's obtuseness when communicating would only make it all go in a spiral down to the abyss. They needed to help this guy fast, before he went nuclear on them and himself.

"All right Agent Wolenczak" Jethro said in a low even tone "Let's get through the rest of events. Tell me what you think is important and if I need anything else, we'll talk in the morning after we all de-stress from the traveling and fighting." Gibbs was trying to use the young man's title and position to establish a more mature, more equal playing field so the adolescent didn't feel that he was being spoken down to or being taken less than seriously when he spoke. The NCIS team leader hoped that his ploy worked because if this guy went postal on them, it would be ugly, as clearly demonstrated by the deaths of Shraeder, his mercenaries and these three punks.

The pale skinned boy's flint-blue eyes were peering deeply into Gibbs's own ocean-blue eyes and they had an impromptu staring contest for a few seconds. Jethro didn't know why, but it was him that looked away first. Usually when a situation like this happened, he never showed weakness, he never backed down. But against what lay asleep inside the adolescent's mind, could anybody really ever win?

Taking a deep, soothing breath, Lucas startled as Kathy put a hand on his shoulder in sign of support. Nobody in the room missed the self-protective reaction he had as he leaned away from her on instinct before blinking owlishly at her, then her hand. Snorting in self-deprecating amusement, the teen sat back in position near his female friend, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loosely.

"Sorry 'bout that Kathy… I hadn't seen you move and I'm a bit strung up right now." Raising his head to look at Gibbs and Hollbert he continued his story from the point he was interrupted. "After leaving the captain's cabin, I went to the galley to talk with the cooks. I like the guys in the kitchens. They always have hometown stories and something warm to eat. As was mentioned, teenage boys have munchies all the time and it was a necessity for me to be friends with the food people from the get go or I would have starved fast. Anyways, I managed to have a good half hour with them and I scored a nice fresh baked pecan pie and some assorted sandwiches, a few cake pieces, you know; solid food that wasn't just chips or cheese sticks. Given Kate and I had a long night ahead of us plowing through the parts orders to figure out what the damn idiots in NCQ had again refused to send out and why, we needed real food to keep going. Her cabin has a washroom and a service counter so we can make all the coffee we need right here so I didn't bother with that except my tankard. I carry that everywhere anyways."

Lucas moved backwards until he was leaning his back against the wall, legs folded up with his arms wrapped around them. "At around 21:40pm I started my way up to Kathy's cabin with my work satchel and an armload of food stuffs. I walked in the senior officers' corridor and was up to commander Ford's door, one away from Kathy's, when the three rednecks showed up. They were all dressed in civvies, and they all made lewd gestures the moment they saw me. The called out to me with an insult and then drew knives all together all at once. They wanted to scare me, to break me, so they walked really slowly, criss-crossing back-and-forth to confuse me. I put down my load of food and satchel next to Ford's door and stood up straight in the middle of the corridor. At that point they started ululating gutturalities, a rape hymnal from the african Zulu tribes while shaking their knives in front of their crotches, simulating fucking their knives in a warning of what I could expect from them. I took a pair of safeties that I carry around like these, hidden in my shirt cuffs."

Lucas almost gave Gibbs and Hollbert a heart attack by showing them two small dark metal cylinders the size of small marker-pens. He took one from each cuff of his flannel shirt and held them up to the light so the five adults could see them. The innocuous little gizmos sent a shiver of dread down the backbone of the three men who had come in recently as they had seen the pictogram on the cylinders; it matched the one from the capsules recovered in the hallway next to the dead corpses.

Bridger asked through clenched teeth "Lucas, Kiddo, is that the same chemical as you used on the bodies outside? Why in God's name do you have so many of the things? And where are the others?"

Gibbs winced as he moved to be able to quickly open the door and evacuate the room. Kathy sat up straight, dropping her feet on the deck plates with matching dull thuds as she graced Bridger with a harsh stare that clearly meant he had passed the limit. Hollbert turned a gimlet eye against the older mariner while Crocker dropped a heavy hard hand on Nathan's arm, instantly getting his old friend's undivided attention.

"Now Nate" Crocker told his academy buddy, "You have to see that the kid has the right of it. He's been maligned, lambasted and outright attacked and injured on this boat. He has the right as any man to carry the means to defend himself. Since he gets attacked by posses of cowardly low-lives who gang up on him in hordes, well, that gives him the right to use area-effect weapons and tools. Besides, better that gas than a grenade or gun that will puncture the outer hull and sink us afore the first quarter of the tour is done." Turning towards Gibbs and Hollbert, Crocker completed "From the opinion of the security department, he has equipment he has manufactured himself as part of his many positions and contracts. He's qualified to use it better than anybody else aboard. And we all saw that he has genuine reasons to fear for his life and health, so I am declaring it lawful carrying of permitted equipments and weapons."

Lucas grumped something under his breath but sat back against the wall, spreading out his legs in front of him as he placed the diminutive bombs back into his shirt cuffs. When he raised his eyes to look at the four men, they were all wearing diverging faces of worry and anguish at what he had stowed in his wrists. Giving them a bratty grin, the boy shrugged and picked up his tankard for a pull of coffee before ending his story.

"Well there isn't much else to say. I was alone against three maniacs with knives who were chanting a rape hymnal while waving around knives and closing in on me. I used what I had available and threw the two cylinders in the middle of their triangle formation at shoulder height. The grenades went off and spread out the acid mist as wide and thick as foreseen. They screamed for about a minute before their throats and vocal chords were eroded away. Their eyes, eardrums and most of their exposed skin had already liquefied by that time. The mist is VERY effective at clearing out organic contaminants or blockages. That's what it's supposed to be, you see. An industrial cleanser with applications as an emergency sterilizer for pharmaceutical and biochemical companies. One other application is a ceramic container filled with the stuff that you throw diseased animal carcasses into to avoid them being put into the food chain, even just as animal feed or fertilizer."

The two federal agents were taking notes, Hollbert on his PDA and Gibbs on his little paper notepad. The dichotomy was amusing to see in action as one was trying to rival Lucas's speed with two thumbs while the other was penciling away like an old pro. Bridger was frowning in thought about what this could turn into at the level of the White House and UEO executive cabinet. Hitchcock was just glad her young friend was intact and safe by her side again, at least until the paperwork caught up to them in the morning.

Crocker moved his ample girth to standing position and went to the service counter to set down his used mug. Adjusting his belt and tools of the trade, he gave the teenager a meaningful gaze that had the boy buck up and make a rebellious face, much to the other four adults' surprise given how cooperative he had been. Then again, he hadn't been in the wrong so why not be helpful? What now?

"Now, now, kid; don't be givin' me any lip" Crocker playfully warned in mock sternness whilst wagging a finger at the teen's most magnificent pouty lower lip. The boy even threw in the puppy eyes just for the odd chance it might work. Manilow's full-bellied laugh was not helping things along. Lucas crossed his arms and frowned angrily, pursing his lips in determination to not move from his place on Kathy's bed until the others cleared the room and left him be.

The chief of security was well and truly amused at the little guy's antics. Little of course meant 5 foot 10 inches of teenaged reed-like growth when completely unfurled from his contorted position. Crocker was always impressed by the idiocy of people when they sneered at the boy's age and thought to dominate him only to revise themselves when they saw he wasn't some minuscule little tike. Manilow certainly had that reaction the first time he heard he'd have a kid aboard and then met the pale runt.

"No, I don't want to hear it Lucas. You are coming to med-bay for a full and thorough physical. It's protocol after every attack or accident, ashore or onboard. Now be a good little department head and come along quietly before I take out the handcuffs and pepper spray." Crocker warned between bouts of laughter. The poor kid just couldn't get a break tonight, even if they all wanted him to finally have some peace. Ha, well; no rest for the wicked they say…

Nathan suddenly had an evil smirk on his face as he teased his young worker: "Yes Lucas, you wouldn't want your new primary employer, the GAO, to find fault with your lack of adherence to protocols. After all, you are supposed to be the watcher who watches the rest of us. How can you accomplish this properly and legitimately if you aren't above board on all issues?"

Kathy was practically biting her fist to keep from exploding in laughter at the face of flabbergasted disbelief Lucas made whilst Hollbert and Gibbs, both old veterans of the road, had no such compunctions. Amidst the common hilarity of the adults, the poor beleaguered teenager unfurled his tall, lanky frame and walked to the desk to pick up his work satchel and personal electronics. Walking towards the door with as much dignity as he could muster in the situation, the youth lifted up his nose in disdain, sneering snottily at the assemblage of adults.

"Uncouth knaves, the besotted lot of ye! To debase thineselves in such garrulous displays at the behest of thine betters! Oh, the humanity of it all!" the boy exclaimed as he faked a swoon, left hand on his face, airing himself with the right. The dropped jaws from the men and harrumphing of contained humor from Kathy's side of the room were good enough to lighten up his mood for the moment. At least until med-bay and the bunch of tick-related parasites after his poor creamy-white hide got their mitts on him.

 **Sunday night: Healer, push a pill on thineself**

(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 22:45pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; Doctor Westphalen's office on sea-deck**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Kristen Westphalen, woman, mother and doctor of many medical sciences, was not happy at the moment. That was the polite version of it. Truthfully, she wanted to strap to her table the top officers of the ship and inflict a fully-awake proctology exam on them but it wasn't a desire born of hostility or personal vendetta. Nooo… It's that it just became obvious to her that they thought with their arses rather than their heads and she wanted to see if they were as brainless from under as from the top. It was purely medical curiosity motivating her, nothing else at all… And it would help the civilian government better craft their orders so the soldiers understand them for a change.

Trotting into her office at flanking speed, she made for the electric kettle on the back cupboard and slammed an angry hand on the button to make it boil. She began the simple and soothing ritual of preparing a full pot of tea by the means of loose leaf tea from a tin and a dipping ball made of sterling silver filigree. Having filled the ball with tea leaf, she set it by its chain inside the pot and then prepared the small mahogany serving tray with small jars of condiments. Even when she was alone, she preferred to have a full tea service at hand for both the comforting familiarity of the items and the few occasions she welcomed an impromptu guest whilst already drinking her cup.

It was very much impolite in British society to refuse someone a seat at the table or in your parlor when it was time for tea. While the current hour was not in the least the real official brittanic tea time of 16:00pm as was the 'High Tea' or 'Royal Tea', it could none the less be accounted as a night cap sort of tea. Especially with the small amount of sherry she poured in the pot, making certain to splash the silver ball so the tea leaf could absorb the alcohol and macerate in preparation for steeping in the scalding water to come.

Becoming aware of the young woman that had silently shadowed her all the way, Kristen set another cup and saucer on the tray before fishing around her lab coat's many pockets for her keyring. Having found the elusive metallic artwork, she unlocked the cupboard and took out something she had put aside under much more stringent security than the small bottle of sherry that usually sat unguarded on top of the cabinet next to the small sink and micro-wave oven. She wasn't afraid of losing the alcohol and would not care anyways. The large deep tin container however held some homemade scones and shortbread cookies made by her mother who was still very much alive in North London and sent her a care package of the most delicious comfort food every month. Cheap quarter-liter bottles of sherry she could misplace and not care, but for this tin she would hunt down the culprit and have his hands cut off and mounted on a stake in front of her office as a warning to others!

Ziva had a small knowing smile as the older woman puttered around her large office, gathering the necessities and also the niceties for a proper British tea. While it obviously wasn't a formal set, the small porcelain service was clearly well used and loved by its owner. The blue and gold pattern of the decorations was rather baroque but not blindingly so as she had seen upon some of the garish tourist gifts in the shops of hotels and airport duty-free kiosks. This was an old, hand crafted original from the late 1700's and it had clearly traveled a lot with its owner.

The smell of sherry made her smile widen and she shrugged off her light leather jacket. The ship's temperature was decent enough to walk around with just her thin t-shirt and not feel chill. The former MOSSAD agent enjoyed the scene the matronly doctor made as she prepared everything in the strict manner of the older generations for whom tea was more than an alternative to coffee. It was a way to de-stress, a way to communicate and a moment of absolute neutrality amongst even the bitterest adversaries to remember that they were all British and all served the Queen's pleasure.

When the kettle beeped and popped its little button to show it had finished boiling, Kristen poured the water in the pot and then placed the pot on its porcelain stand on the tray. She brought the assemblage over at the small four-seat meeting table she was lucky to have in her office space. The plush high-backed chairs were much more comfortably cushioned than either of the pivoting chairs around her desk, including her own. Cheapskate UEO bureaucrats; how could you concentrate on work when your back was killing you? Inept twits!

The doctor took a small carton box of wood matches and cracked one, enjoying the lively little dance of the flame on the tip before she lit the paraffin burning tea-light hidden inside the stand. The stronger, brighter flame spread a lively show of light and shadows that soothed the eyes. Both women felt a gentle warmth that climbed from their fingertips up their arms all the way to their hearts as they placed their hands next to the flame for of few seconds to enjoy the feel and serenity of the diminutive fire.

When the aroma of sherry-laden tea wafted from the pot, it had steeped enough to be tasteful and cooled down enough from the boiling point to be drunk without scalding the mouth. The most favorable moment to pour the brew and smell its curative effluves. Kristen served her guest first as good manners demanded and then herself before gesturing at the goodies in the tin. Taking a small porcelain plate and cloth napkin, Ziva served herself a cookie and a scone, wanting a taste of each. Westphalen did the same with a small, satisfied smile. She might be loosing a few baked goods but any chance to show another person the quality and beauty of her mother's cooking was good to her eyes. If the guest truly enjoyed the food, then so much the better.

The young federal agent raised her cup in salute and honored her host. "Shalom, good doctor. Long rule the Dame Windsor, Elizabeth II, she who IS Britannia in the hearts of many, even outside of her realms." The young Israeli was gladdened to see the older woman smile proudly in return and nod her acceptance.

"May the sun never set on any land allied of Britannia, that evil never have shadows to dwell in." Kristen responded tactfully yet meaningfully at her guest. The beautiful young woman half-closed her eyes in contemplation for about four seconds before her small demure smile widened fully, showing her satisfaction at the return greeting she received.

"Well met, doctor. I hope to have many an occasion to share a cup with you in the coming days. Although, more peaceful times would be appreciated by both of us, yes?"

Kristen smile was a bit brittle but genuine as she deeply inhaled the bitter & sweet aroma that combining tea and sherry produced before tipping her cup to drink. After each woman had consumed the first cup and cookie, they settled more casually to talk politely as they ate the scones and drank through the whole pot. As it was kept warm by the paraffin stove, it kept at exactly the desirable warmth and lubricated their conversation quite nicely.

"I apologize for the unseemly display that I made during your crime scene work, agent David. I was not expecting the reaction than Nathan, I mean captain Bridger, had towards me. Normally, he lets me vent then sends me in to check on the child to see that he is indeed physically fine. Everyone aboard all know that Lucas's definition of 'fine' means that until he is comatose and unable to tell us he is fine, then he is clearly and provably all right to work and be by himself."

Ziva's snort of humor matched her amused smirk. "My colleagues at NCIS are the same. Even without the advanced training of MOSSAD they are quite resilient and taking medical leave is not well lived by any of them. My team leader is the worst offender as he is like Lucas; unless comatose, he will find a way to move and aggravate you, even if only by phone or email. In fact, the only reason he learned to use email was because a few years back he suffered a small food poisoning that affected his larynx and vocal chords for two weeks and he could not leave voice messages anymore but insisted on still coming to the office to do paperwork and lead the cases. It has become an inside joke that the only to teach Gibbs a new trick is to kill him with it first!"

Kristen couldn't help the small bout of laughter at the funny anecdote. She needed laughter right now, and good cheer as there was precious little to be had. Her face became neutral again as she peered deeply into the depths of her cup, twirling the liquid in hopes of receiving some form of revelation.

" _In vino veritas_ , doctor; you have the wrong beverage to obtain answers to your queries. Unless you are a gypsy grand-mother about to commit a tea-reading, in which case I would like my cup read as well." Ziva spoke gently, feeling that there was a deep sorrow in this woman. She was hurting in a motherly way that she remembered from the women who had lived through and remembered the _Shoah_ , the deportations, the camps, losing kin and never, ever learning their fates in this life. Looking carefully at Westphalen's somber, depressive visage, Ziva could see a resemblance to the looks and despair of her grandmother and great-aunts when she was a small child and they still shared life with them.

Trying to put forth a smile, Kristen spoke with heavy emotions in her voice. "I have failed him. I tried to set him free. I tried to make them see how wrong this all is, to no avail. The government wants its soldier-boy and the crew are determined to see it happening. The poor lad isn't even aware of how he's being used. He is so desperate to fit in, to be accepted and to have his presence valued by someone that he goes along with all the cruelty and depravity without realizing what he's become. He came to us as a child needing human warmth and support but will leave as another mindless monster who kills and destroys without remorse just for a pat on the head and a bit of approval from a nameless cad with stars on his shoulders."

The younger woman calmed down considerably as she heard the despair and genuine care in the doctor's voice. She saw Lucas as being forced to serve aboard as a slave laborer who then was forced into becoming a child-soldier as well. No wonder the mature woman was so besides herself: she thought of the situation as both criminal and depraved, with no one to help her out. Alas, Ziva had seen the basic briefs about Lucas Wolenczak and he was here mostly voluntarily and stood to make a tidy profit and some strong contacts if it all worked out. Not that the formidable medic sat across the table would ever accept it. He ageist views and her rampant motherliness would never tolerate that a child under 18 years old be entangled in military matters. The poor woman was in for several severe disappointing rebukes in the near future.

At least now that Ziva knew Westphalen was neither unstable, a criminal or out to hurt the UEO's prized teenaged genius, she could relax and truly enjoy the marvelous tea and kind hospitality offered to her. It was so rare to find good quality, well brewed tea outside of England or Israel these days. And lending a sympathetic shoulder for the matronly doctor to cry on was no effort. She grew up in a neighborhood filled with the grieving grand-mothers, mothers, sisters of WW II victims as well as the widows and daughters of the soldiers fallen in defense of the homeland's peace. Helping a grieving woman through her pain was as natural and ordinary as cooking and eating in Israel since it was founded and before even that. Ziva smiled sadly at the thought that the doctor's good wishes and heartfelt kindness would not be well received by either the teenager himself or the adults who came up with the arrangement. Then the lawyers would get involved, the Union of Federal Employees, the Association of Military Contractors, the UEO Military Industries' Chamber of Commerce, etc… No matter how good her intentions or pure her feelings, Kristen Westphalen would not be well seen or well received at all. Ziva could only pray and hope she did not see her career and contacts destroyed by the fallout of the confrontation.

 **Sunday night: What a palpitating palpation did we palp!**

(NCIS – opening theme)

 **Sunday 9th of February, 2020; 23:22pm**

 **SeaQuest DVS 6000, UEO flagship; med-bay examination room**

 **North of the Australian coastline**

Lucas sat listlessly on the padded, paper-wrapped examination bench, slowly swinging back and forth his dangling legs while contemplating his empty hands. The nurses had taken his coffee tankard along with his work satchel and portable electronics, even the PAL. He was still dressed but expected that to change just as soon as the medics got here. Somehow, the guys in white lab coats were all of the opinion that they had to palpate your bare skin to figure out what ailed you. As if a teenager couldn't find out his problems all by himself without stripping to his skivvies. Pffft! Bunch of closeted perverts, the doctors all were…

The door to the examination room opened and in came the procession of three people, only one of whom the boy knew well as the other two were from the NCIS contingent. Doctor Levine had been assigned the task of examining Lucas as any contact with Kristen Westphalen at this point would prove detrimental to both the investigation and the auditory health of everyone in earshot. The men from Washington were senior medical examiner Dr Donald 'Ducky' Mallard and junior medical examiner James 'Jimmy' Palmer. Both newcomers had changed from the dark blue jumpsuits they used in the crime scene analysis to the more conventional pale blue hospital scrubs and white lab coats universal to medical practionners all over the world.

Joseph Levine walked up to Lucas and patted his knee in a familiar, friendly manner in an effort to set him at ease. Whilst most people would think the boy was already calm and passive, Levine understood clearly that it was not the case at all. A nervous, fidgety speeded Lucas was a healthy, happy Lucas hard at work rebuilding reality around him into something better for all of them to live in. An immobile, sedate Lucas who gazed out into nothing and seemed passively indolent was bad news all around as that meant he was starting to ask himself if the people around him still deserved that he hold back on the many retaliatory measures he could use against them for their offenses against himself, society and Nature at large.

And Lucas was presently very, very placid.

With every alarm bell and klaxon sounding off inside his head, calling for immediate evacuation of the ship while they still could, Levine tried to carefully establish a peaceful contact with the child who walked around with grenades of warfare gas in his sleeves. The old jewish medic hoped he had built enough rapport with the young man during his few months aboard to rouse him from his contemplative state without triggering a melt down or defensive reflexes.

"Ahem, Lukaas, mein Kinder" the elder doctor started in his thick Hebrew-German-English accent "Ve need to prozeed vith ze examination. You are in concordance, ja?" he asked in low tones, hoping not to startle the teen.

Frowning at the interruption of his thought patterns about the saturation point and shelf life of his newly tested combat acid, the teenager turned a gimlet eye on the doctor and sustained the level-4 glare ( _level-1 was the absolute worst and was used to promise slow, painful, abominable death_ ) until the adult cleared his throat and backed away from the exam table.

"Gud then; ve can prozeed. In order to make thingz eazier on all of uz und limit ze paperwurk tomorrow, ze doktor Palmer vill officiate whilst hiz colleague herr Mallard vill analyze and notate the filez. I vill remain and vitness the eventz az vell as zerve az your zupport in caze of problemz."

Lucas turned his glare towards Palmer and increased it to a level-3 just on the principle that this guy could presume to decide by himself to be the physician of record for the exam. Lucas HATED not being the one who chose what happened to his person and anybody who tried to barge in on his body or personal space soon found out painfully just how defensive he could get.

Jimmy Palmer gulped nervously as he locked eyes with the teenager and realized he was essentially staring at something even Gibbs wouldn't be able to stop or intimidate. The stormy flint-blue eyes were glaring at him with such a gut churning mix of hate, contempt and raw unfettered rage that Palmer felt he was about to melt through the deck plates as if he had gotten doused in the bio-reduction gas like the three dead criminals from earlier.

Now, many would thing Jimmy would back down and cower in front of the monstrously intelligent, catastrophically belligerent teenager. They would all be wrong. Jimmy had spent almost 14 years now in the employ of NCIS and been in close daily contact with Jethro Gibbs for most of it. From going out on the road to pick up bodies and contaminated evidence, performing autopsies and delivering the unpleasant results, he had been near Gibbs, the Director, the SecNav and the rest of the team often enough to understand a few things about powerful, hard headed people.

Firstly; don't doubt yourself or at least don't show those doubts publicly. You lose all credibility when you doubt your own concepts and theories.

Secondly; don't ask permission to do your job or what is right. That shows weakness, cowardice and lack of character all around your life.

Thirdly and most important point; the truly powerful people, those capable of hurting a large mass of humanity or damaging a great tract of land are usually the safest, calmest and most even-handed people you'll get to know in your life. If they weren't stable and calm they would self-destruct in the practice of their Art and the planet would already be burning.

The simple basic truth is that people like Lucas exist because Nature, society and science need them to exist so they can bring knowledge and modernity to the masses. It is unfortunate that not all knowledge is clean or nice and kind but that doesn't make it any less necessary to the process of enlightenment the planet's population needs to sustain to avoid stagnation and devolving into chaos. The key to dealing with high-powered continent slagging genocidal scientists was to simply speak to them and ask what they needed or wanted.

Simple conversation.

A truly trite and simplistic solution to a volatile situation with the potential to turn into a nuclear or biological nightmare. If the teenager got so brassed-off he decided to hijack the ship and launch missiles there wouldn't be much that could be done to stop him. Palmer however was willing to bet his marriage that the young man wasn't anywhere near the precipice of insanity and the depths of anger needed to enact that scenario.

Sure, the kid's glare was eerily reminiscent of Gibbs' own _blue death_ stare but he was also not aggressive or displaying any signs of anxiety, discomfort or impatience. Jimmy decided that the few seconds of observation had given him what he needed to know and he could proceed, regardless of whatever feelings of uncertainty the other doctors were experiencing.

"Hello there. We haven't been formally introduced, have we?" Palmer extended his hand to Lucas in friendly openness "My name is James Palmer but you can call me Jimmy. That's my boss, doctor Mallard but everybody calls him Ducky." Lucas surprised the other adults by extending his hand to shake with the young medic as was polite to do when greeting someone new in this context.

Taking the time to lean forward a bit, Palmer looked directly into the flint-blue orbs of death and smiled a little sadly as he wondered what life experiences could have forced a child to develop such high-wattage glare at such a young age. "You glare like my other boss, agent Gibbs, when he gets bad news or we haven't finished the autopsy fast enough to his taste. How did a guy like you develop that kind of intimidating stare at your age?" Jimmy asked completely unaware of the dumbfounded looks the other two medics were sending at his back. Was he really trying to trigger the kid's temper?

Lucas pursed his lips in thought and answered slowly, politely even as the man hadn't insulted him or done anything wrong yet. "It's part hereditary on my mother's side and part necessity of life when your in the top 1 / 100,000,000 most intelligent people on the planet. Everybody around either ignored me, spat on me because of my age and size or tried to bully me into subservience because the majority of humanity is criminally depraved and works on raw force like that. Managing an intimidating glare that actually works is kind of a basic survival skill in circumstances like that." The teen spoke placidly, obviously not interested in the young doctor but maintaining a level of professional civility nonetheless because that was the thing to do in the situation.

Nodding to himself that his evaluation of the person and situation was spot on, Jimmy stood straight and explained slowly in detail exactly which tests they needed to perform as well as which were attributed to the ordeal with Shraeder's invasion versus which were for tonight's mess. He concluded by asking Lucas to undress and put on the set of pale blue scrubs reserved for the patient, without anything under in case they needed to look at bruising, lesions or other externally visible conditions.

Lucas heaved a long suffering sigh and took the proffered scrubs with one last malevolent glare all around the room before he entered the diminutive toilet cabinet attached to the exam room. The thing served as changing cubicle and the toilet & sink combo were there for sanitation as well as in case the patient became nauseous and needed to vomit.

Coming back dressed only in the thin pale garments, the boy looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror mounted on the wall next to the exam table and winced in misery. The damned color made him look so pale he could pass for Casper the Friendly Ghost's still living cousin. And the emphasis on his pallor of course emphasized the dark bags under his eyes and the tiredness in his stooped posture as he shuffled from one place to another. Looking blearily at the three doctors, he could very well tell that this exam would not be fun at all. Especially since all three were guys and way too old for his tastes.


End file.
